Separate
by BBIRedDi
Summary: What happens when Robert "Rocket" Romano leaves Cook County General Hospital one evening and meets a very unconventional young woman, quite by accident. Much of this story takes place outside of the ER, but Chapter 2 is set there. Set in the world of early Season 6, ending on Valentine's Day. Please read and review - feedback welcome! *first submission, please be gentle*
1. Chapter 1

**Separate**

Meeting Robert Romano was a complete and utter accident, in every sense of the word. It was the kind of evening that made Melora wish she lived in the mountains, far from cars and honking horns, far from people with cell phones glued to the sides of their heads, and very far from smog and the foul stenches wafting up from sewage grills in the sidewalk. She was lugging her cello across the busy, four-lane thoroughfare towards the bus stop, which was always fun, but even more so in the icy rain, which froze upon the wet ground. The coat she wore was insufficient, and she scolded herself for not wearing the thicker wool one. Her knit cap was only getting wet from the ice-cold rain; she hadn't brought an umbrella because it wasn't raining when she left home earlier that day and it was next to impossible to haul a cello and hold an umbrella at the same time, not to mention her oversized purse. Her old VW Bug was in the shop ( _again!_ ), and the cello seemed to weigh a ton in its case. She had just managed to get off of one bus, hopefully in time to catch her other bus across the street.

As she hopped – or stumbled – off the bus, she could see the other bus she needed coming down the street towards her. She might be able to catch it, but she wouldn't have time to go down to the crosswalk; she'd just have to cross where she was. There was no traffic coming from either direction, so, holding the cello case in front of her, she cut between two cars; one was a Jaguar, and she sniffed at it disdainfully.

That is, until she smacked right into its owner as he was crossing around the front of it. He'd been looking down at his keys before Melora hopped off the sidewalk, brandishing her case like a shield. Unfortunately, it didn't act as one. It felt more like she'd run straight into a brick wall, and she fell backwards, first trying to step back onto the slippery, frozen asphalt to gain her footing. Her attempt was useless; it merely caused her to turn and fall on her side, twisting her ankle as she fell onto the curb, cello case crashing down on top of her.

"Christ almighty!" Robert Romano exclaimed as Melora tried to twist around and see just exactly where she was laying, and praying there was nothing extraordinarily awful under her. He lifted the cello off of her, and she sat up quickly, reaching for it. She didn't even look at him as he set leaned the case against the side of his car. Who was this clumsy little woman, he thought, and why the hell was she running around so dangerously with that cello case? "I see you carry around your own sarcophagus," he remarked. "Which is wise, because you're bound to kill yourself running blindly with it in front of you."

"My cello! Be careful!" Melora saw the bus she was trying to catch as it pulled away from the stop across the street, curious faces peering out at her as it rumbled past. She didn't know what she felt more: pain, frustration at missing the bus, or relief at not having to face those strangers after taking such a ridiculous pratfall. She looked up at Romano sarcastically. "Great. Thanks a lot. Thank you very much," she grumbled. "Now I'm going to miss early practice."

She eyed her assailant carefully. He looked to be a little taller than her, which wasn't saying much, since she was only 5'5". He looked like he was in his late thirties or early forties, and his face was very stern, with small eyes set back under his brow. He wore a dark hat – it wasn't quite a fedora or a bowler, but fell somewhere in between the two. His thick black overcoat came to about mid-calf, which was basically where Melora sat, silently judging him for making her miss her bus. His suit made her think that she had been knocked down by that evil of all evils, a businessman, the Exact Thing That Was Wrong With The World And This City In Particular. Probably a damn stockbroker or something. _I wonder where the cell phone is. Or the briefcase_. "Is this what you do for fun?"

"Yes," he replied, completely deadpan and serious. "I go out in search of soaking wet women running around with oversized musical instruments so I can wait for that one perfect moment and knock her down. It's a strange hobby, I know, but it's more exciting than golf." He made sure her cello was resting securely out of harm's way before turning back to her, angry at her clumsiness and nerve at blaming _him_ for her own fall. He reached down. "Are you all right?"

"Sorry," Melora replied glumly, trying to sit up as he gave her a hand. She felt a sharp pain shoot up from her ankle as she sat back onto the sidewalk, and cried out.

"What? What hurts?" he asked quickly, his furrowed brow the only sign of concern visible on his face as he opened his umbrella and held it over them both.

She squinted back up at him through the rain as she bent forward and grasped her ankle, suddenly realizing her right side ached as well. "Just about everything," she breathed. "Mostly my ankle."

He looked down at her speculatively, hands on hips. "Probably twisted it a bit going down," he said as he lowered himself in front of her, reaching for her ankle.

Melora pushed his hand away. "Thanks, but I think I'll be-"

 _Women_ , he thought. _Stubborn and stupid all at once, most of them._ He looked at her and spoke as if to a misbehaving child. "I'm a doctor, now let's have a look." She still looked at him suspiciously, and he let out a tired sigh as he rolled his eyes and pulled a laminated card with a clip on it from his pocket and thrust it towards her. "There's my hospital ID. Satisfied?"

Melora studied it for a moment; it was from Cook County General Hospital. Well, it was his picture, all right. The stern, unsmiling face that looked out from the photo had a head of very short, reddish receding hair. She glanced at the name before handing it back to him. **Dr. Robert Romano, Chief of Surgery, Chief of Staff**. Seemed qualified, at least. "Well, Dr. Romano, go ahead. Knock your socks off." She removed her hands and he took a look at her booted ankle, turning it slowly to straighten it with his gloved hands. The pain sharpened even more and she let out another yell. "Ow! Be careful!" she admonished. "Um, please," she added, politely this time.

"Sorry," Romano said unconvincingly, still studying it and moving it from one side to the other. "Probably a sprain. I can't see too well through this rain, not to mention this boot. You may have torn a ligament." He stood up again, looking at his watch irritably. "Oh well, hop on in. Or hobble. Whatever. We'll have a look at it at the hospital." _Another fabulous evening spent going back to that damn hospital_ , he thought. _And to the ER, to boot. No pun intended_. He pointed his key chain towards the Jaguar and pushed a button, causing the car to let out a loud chirp and clunk as the alarm was disarmed and the doors were unlocked.

She looked uncertainly towards the car. "I don't know. I have this weird thing about jumping into strange men's cars."

He shook his head impatiently. "Look, this isn't any fun for me, either. I'm going to miss the dinner and lecture downtown now, and all because I wanted to pick up a newspaper, for God's sake. Much as I'd like to just leave you here to make smart remarks to yourself, I took some stupid oath fifteen years ago and I can't do that. So if you want a free trip to the hospital and exam, I'll give it to you." Romano studied at Melora as she thought it over, realizing how that might have sounded and adding, "I'll get a nurse or an intern to help you out when we get there. Come on," he added, softening his tone and holding a hand down to her to help her stand. "This rain is freezing, and you're thoroughly soaked."

Looking up at him again, freezing and pathetic there on the sidewalk, Melora felt inexplicably embarrassed by the whole situation. It seemed highly unlikely that the Chief of Staff (and Surgery!) of a hospital would intentionally try to smooth-talk girls into his car and strangle them, and he looked too put-out to be a serious threat. She reluctantly reached her hand up towards him and stood, not putting any weight on her ankle as he helped her up and towards the car. "Okay," she agreed, nodding. "Thank you." Glancing at his car, she wondered aloud, "God, will my cello fit in that thing?"

"That thing, as you call it, can seat my dog pretty comfortably in the back, and she's no poodle. So I think it will. Hang on." Romano opened the passenger side door as Melora leaned against the hood of the car and rearranged things in the back seat to make room for the case, which he struggled with as he wedged it in the back seat. "God, do you have a body in there?" he asked as he backed out, tossing some newspapers on the passenger seat.

"Not yet," she mumbled, looking angrily at the newspapers, which were obviously meant to keep her from getting the seat wet. "It's a good thing this coat is black already."

"It's leather, what do you want me to do?" He helped her sit down and shut the door after her.

Romano got in and, looking a little guilty, reached into the back and presented her with a blanket. "You're look like you're freezing," he conceded, less annoyed and softening for a moment as he started the car. But just for a moment. "I don't need you catching pneumonia on top of everything else."

"Thanks," Melora replied grudgingly, in the manner of a teenager who is still mad at a friend but somewhat willing to call a truce. She slid her arms out of her coat sleeves, and wrapped the soft blanket around her, shivering as she realized how cold she was. The car was still warm inside from the heater, and the warmth seemed to bring out the knowledge that she was chilled to the bone. They pulled out into traffic. "Well, if I had to get knocked down, at least it was by a doctor," she said, offering a small, thin smile as a peace offering.

Romano acknowledged, "This must be your lucky day, Ms. … well, who are you, anyway?"

She pulled the blanket tightly around her, her long hair slipping from the pins she had used to pile it on top of her head. "Melora Weir. Glad to make your acquaintance," she said smartly, though smiling to let him know she was only kidding.

"Likewise, Ms. Weir," he replied, raising his eyebrows at her joke. "I'd say it was nice running into you, but that would be pretty awful." At least she was becoming civil. And now that she wasn't yelling at him, he could see that she was quite pretty for someone who'd just taken a spill on a soaking evening.

"I agree with you there." She started removing her hairpins, letting down her long platinum hair; it felt to her as if she had a bird's nest on her head at this point. "My mother tells me it's rude to brush your hair in public, but I think it's understandable at the moment, if you don't mind." She directed the heater vents in her direction, becoming more and more aware of how soaked she was. _No wonder this guy offered to take me to the hospital,_ she thought to herself. _He probably thinks I escaped from the Psych Ward._

"Be my guest. There's a mirror there on the other side of the sun visor. It'll light up once you open it."

Melora took her brush from her purse and brushed out her long tangled hair, water dripping onto her lap as it ran down the limp curls at its ends. She offered, "I'm sorry you're missing your dinner thing."

"It's not that important, really," he shrugged. He thought of how dull it would have been, and all the idiotic small talk he would have had to make. "I should be thanking you. It was one of those appearance things, you know. Some of the supervisors from the county are going, and some other surgeons I'd like to stay on good terms with." He glanced at her as she brushed her hair out; she actually was very striking…when not actually striking anything. "It's no great loss. I just hate going back to the hospital at night, especially the ER. Something inevitably comes up and they try to sucker me into working. Eleven hours is enough for one day." He thought of Kerry Weaver briefly. She would probably come hobbling after him with that cane of hers, exclaiming about how busy things were and that she was about to page him anyway, since the other doctors upstairs were busy. The same old song and dance.

"Eleven hours! Hmm. I guess that's why I never went into medicine." Melora took her brush from her purse and brushed out her tangled hair, water dripping onto her lap as it ran down the limp curls at its ends. She saw him looking at her hair in a puzzled way at a stop light. "Go ahead," she told him, knowing what he was thinking in advance. "Ask."

"Well, since you mention it, why are you running around in what appears to be Victorian undergarments?" he glanced at her outfit, peeking out from beneath her long but ineffective coat. Melora wore black and white striped tights underneath her white bloomers and black translucent petticoat, along with Victorian-style black ankle boots. A long white wispy buttoned shirt – also Victorian-looking - was worn partly open over a cream brocade corset, with ribbon-like straps reaching over her shoulders to the back, where laces criss-crossed and tied it together. "Have you escaped from an Edward Gorey drawing?" If it wasn't a costume, perhaps he'd be better off sending her straight up to Psych. He had no problem looking at this petite blond women in soaking clothes, but he couldn't imagine it was at all comfortable for her.

She smiled at his deadpan delivery, this time with actual surprise. "I wish! I love Gorey. As for the outfit – no, I don't normally dress quite to this extreme just to go to the market. My band is performing tonight and this – well, this is what we wear." Melora looked down more critically now. "Actually, it's not _too_ far off from my everyday outfits. I guess I should have worn something warmer and just changed there." She sighed sadly. "It's all ruined now. The corset had better dry out okay, or that'll be $400 down the drain." She looked back up at him as he drove, eyes glued to the road. "I'll have to go home and get a new outfit before I head out there." She looked at her watch again. "I think I'll have time."

"A band?" Not looking away from the road, he gestured towards the cello. "What sort of music?"

"I would have to say it's a little of everything. Two cellos and a violin. Oh, and we have a drummer, too. I guess you'd say we're classically alternative. We're trying to get the term 'historical cello rock' to catch on, but ..." Melora smiled and shook her head. "Everyone wants a category."

Historical cello rock? None of those words went together, as far as he knew. This intrigued him, though. "And what is the name of this band?" He'd never heard of a band with classical instruments, except for those that used them as occasional back-up.

"Metronome." She made a tick-tock motion with her finger, indicating the instrument for keeping time.

"Sounds . . . interesting, Ms. Weir." He reminded himself to pick a more conventional woman to knock down next time. Then again, conventional tended to be tedious and boring, like almost every other woman he'd come across. Well, at least she was easy on the eyes and had a quick wit. _The view from here is just fine._

He looked away quickly as she turned to him. "Seeing as how I almost fatally wounded you with my cello, you may call me Melora."

Romano shook his head. "Not if I'm going to examine that ankle. Call me whatever you want later, but it's Dr. Romano and Ms. Weir until then." The last thing he needed was some sort of ethical dilemma.

Melora shrugged, not really understanding what names had to do with it. "You're the expert." She looked out at the rain coming down and shivered despite the heater. "You don't suppose the hospital has a dryer handy, do you?"

Now she wanted to her laundry, he thought, shaking his head. "None corset-friendly, I'm afraid. We could loan you some scrubs. What the hell, keep 'em." He pulled into the hospital parking garage, opening the gate with a card-key and proceeding to his designated space.

"Don't try to get out alone, I'll be there in a second." Romano obligingly got out of the car and helped her out. "Try to remember about the whole ankle thing. You're not here for the nickel tour."

Melora replied wearily, "I'll try and remember." She accepted his assistance, taking his arm as they walked along to avoid putting much weight on her ankle as they followed signs towards the ER.

 _To be continued…_


	2. Chapter 2

(Note: The usual disclaimers here – ER characters are just being borrowed for the sake of the story, and the character of Melora is a fictional creature. Story is set sometime in early Season 6, which would be around 2000 I think. Please do read and review, and feedback is greatly appreciated!)

 **Separate**

Chapter 2

Everything was chaos and confusion when they entered the ER, and Romano shook his head. "Christ. I knew it. One freezing rain is all it takes. Let's see if we can do this without being noticed . . . Too late."

Melora saw a young woman hurrying towards them, much too young-looking to be anything more than a student. "Dr. Romano! Can you help me a second?"

"No, Ms. Knight, I can't. I'm officially not here. Where's your supervisor?"

"Carter's with a patient." She had a pretty but anxious look on her round and gentle face, light blond hair frazzled from the hectic night. "He said he's too busy and wouldn't listen, but all I need is an okay."

Melora hopped slightly as she leaned against him, right foot raised to avoid putting pressure on it. Romano's jaw clenched briefly before shutting his eyes and shaking his head. "All right. Tell me."

The young hopeful quickly said, "Twelve-year old female presents post-seizure, disoriented but aware. Seizure was tonic clonic, with a two minute LOC. No history of seizure activity, and the parents aren't sure of past family history with epilepsy."

Romano's expression did not change. "And you were thinking - ?"

"Juvenile myoclonic epilepsy?"

Romano nodded. "And what should you do?"

"CT scan and neurology consult?"

"Right. Start the process. Then get Carter and tell him – _tell_ , don't ask – that you need him to see the patient and look at your evaluation. This year. Then tell him he needs to see me right after. I'll be in one of the examining rooms." Romano removed his hat as the intern hesitated. "What is it now, Ms. Knight?"

"Dr. Romano, Carter really was busy."

"Was his patient critical?" Romano still had that stern and impatient look, Melora noticed.

Lucy Knight paused. "I don't know."

"Then send him to me and I'll ask." She still hesitated. "For God's sake, Ms. Knight, I'm not going to do anything drastic, but it's my job to see that he's supervising you properly. And that means to observe all of your patients. Now get him to observe and then tell him to see me."

Melora saw the regretful look on Lucy Knight's face as she turned and walked away. Hopping once more to keep her balance, Melora commented, "She was thinking she should have asked someone else."

"She definitely should have." Hmmm, he thought. Ms. Weir was much more clever than he'd first thought.

Romano led Melora to a seat near the front desk and saw a haggard-looking woman with red hair, a metal support cane and wearing a white doctor's coat purposefully approaching them. "Oh, good. Here we go," he sighed, then turned to the woman. "Kerry. Busy night, I see."

"You could call it that," she replied, glancing momentarily at Melora. "Who's this?"

"A stray I found on the side of the road. Twisted ankle, probably nothing big. Just wanted to run a film to check for fracture and wrap it up, preferably with no really bad news in the ligament department." The doctor continued looking at him, so he reluctantly added, "Melora Weir. Melora, this is Dr. Kerry Weaver. She's the zookeeper here." He turned back to Dr. Weaver. He knew she always had something unpleasant in store for him. "Did you need something else?"

Kerry nodded towards Melora. "Can Lucy take her?"

"No, she cannot. I need to see to it myself."

"I've got a multiple trauma coming in and Greene's on location for another forty-five. If we can borrow you until he gets back, we could really use the assist." He shot a glare at her that made her quickly add, "Robert, I wouldn't ask if I didn't really need it. I was just going to have you paged. There's three crits at least."

He exhaled heavily, shaking his head. He could not ignore critical emergencies. Romano looked back up at Kerry. "Exactly forty-five minutes. And I won't take any surgeries upstairs. They've got plenty up there to cover."

"Absolutely," Kerry quickly agreed.

Robert gestured towards Melora, who was beginning to feel like a child in the nurse's office at school. "Lucy can do the film, but send her over here first." He took his coat off as Weaver left and looked down at Melora, who hadn't said anything recently, intimidated by the noise and rush of people all around her.

"What a surprise," he sighed. He looked over at Melora and noticed she looked a bit guilty, which struck him as both odd and charming, so he added the first words she heard him say in a normal tone, "Don't worry. I would have ended up here anyway. I'll take care of the ankle and see that you get home and to your show on time. The x-ray would probably take an hour, anyway, with all the accidents coming in."

"So…you're not staying with me?" Her voice sounded small and reluctant.

He shook his head, assuring her, "Lucy Knight will take care of getting you to x-ray and writing up a chart. She's a fourth year med student, very capable. And…" _Female_ , he wanted to add, thinking she might find that comforting, then thinking the better of it. "Uh, very nice."

Lucy arrived then, eager to be of use and make a good impression on Dr. Romano. "Dr. Weaver said you had something for me?"

Romano nodded. "Is your patient okay for a while?"

"Yeah. Carter's observing the patient now, and we're waiting for CT to open up."

"Okay. This is Melora Weir," he said, motioning towards Melora, who still sat mute, just listening and observing. "I want you to run a film, write up an evaluation, but do not - I repeat – do _not_ treat, I'll do that myself. Oh, and get her some scrubs to change into before she freezes, please. Also some warmed towels and a blanket. Leave the chart and I'll take care of it from there. This one's on me, not insurance, so list me as responsible for payment." He turned back to Melora. "I'll be back in one hour, no later. Just go with Ms. Knight here." He turned and left to change.

Lucy watched as he rushed off, and looked at Melora. "Is he a friend of yours?"

Melora shrugged. "I don't think so."

Lucy guided Melora towards Exam One, where there were three or four padded exam tables separated by screens – one was empty, three were occupied. Once Melora was eased onto the table, Lucy told her, "Okay, Ms. Weir, I need to evaluate, so please tell me what happened." As Melora explained the details of the run-in with Dr. Romano, She could tell Lucy was trying very hard to fight back a smile.

Melora grinned, feeling a little sheepish. "Look, I know it's funny. Don't worry about it. So what do you think about the ankle?" Melora had removed her boots and tights in as genteel a manner as she could manage, her right ankle swollen and bruised.

Lucy gently took Melora's foot in hand. She peered carefully at it as she touched it in a few tender places and Melora gasped and winced a few times. "Well, it looks like a bad sprain. You'll have to stay off of it for at least two or three days, and it'll take six to eight weeks to heal completely. It's not broken, but Dr. Romano wants to take an x-ray just in case the deltoid ligament, which is inside the ankle, is torn. There can be fractures that go along with that. I'm sure that's all that this is about." She looked back up at Melora. "You lucked out. At least you were knocked down by someone who can fix it for free."

"Yeah, lucky me." Melora thought of how abrupt he had been with Lucy and Dr. Weaver, the other doctors, and how he had not seemed that way in the car. "Is he always like that?"

"Dr. Romano?" Lucy shrugged, replying, "Mostly. He actually likes me better than the others, I'm told, which I think just means he doesn't yell at me."

Melora leaned back, propping herself up with her elbows. "I'd hate to see how he is with people he **really** doesn't like. He was actually kind of decent back in the car. I mean, after we stopped being annoyed with each other."

Lucy shrugged diplomatically. "Well, he just does what he does because he thinks he knows how to run things better than anyone else. Who knows, maybe he does. I mean, they must have given him the job for a reason." Lucy wrote a few things on a chart, then continued, "Anyway, he doesn't have a lot of fans around here. Just about none, in fact. But most keep it to themselves."

Melora nodded. "Well, he's the boss, huh?"

Lucy looked up at her somewhat glumly. "Unfortunately. Don't get me wrong, he's the best at what he does, but he's not what I'd call a people person." She helped Melora down off the table. "I'm surprised he wants to give the final okay and wrap your ankle himself. That's lackey work."

"Probably afraid I'll sue or something," laughed Melora. "What's next?"

"We're taking you to x-ray and then back here, and then you get to sit around for half an hour or so until we get the x-rays back and Dr. Romano's free to finish up." She looked at Melora, who was shivering in her wet clothes. "Let's get you into some dry clothes first." Lucy disappeared for a few moment, returning with a pair of strange papery slippers and green scrubs, along with a towel and blanket. She pulled the curtain closed around Melora's table. "Go ahead and change. I'll be right out here when you're done." Melora toweled her hair – and herself – dry as best she could and, feeling like she was in a department store trying on some really dull clothes, changed as swiftly as she could without further injuring her ankle. She called out to Lucy when she was done. The material she wore was thin, and she was still cold, but it was better than cold and wet. Lucy pulled open the curtain and held out a crutch. She handed it to Melora. "Take it slow – they take some getting used to."

After the x-ray was taken, Lucy eventually reappeared and took Melora back to the exam room.

"What time is it?" Melora asked as they headed down the hall.

"Uh, about 6:30," Lucy told her, glancing at her watch. They heard a din of shouting voices and the clatter of wheels on linoleum as they entered the ER once more. Dr. Weaver was shouting orders at doctors and nurses, most of whom were already battling away in three different rooms. Melora saw Romano in one of them, furiously rattling off orders to the nurses, who hovered around the patient handing instruments to the doctors, while the other doctor quickly shot information back to Romano. "I guess the multiple trauma got here." Lucy led Melora back onto the exam table and helped her ease up onto it. She then handed Melora another towel. "Here. Your hair is still pretty wet."

Melora had barely had a chance to thank Lucy when Dr. Weaver burst into the room, gesturing with her cane for Lucy to come outside. "Come on, Lucy, we need you out here yesterday. Assist Carter in Four."

Lucy's worried, urgent look returned as she nodded and quickly told Melora. "I gotta go. Just change and stay here. Dr. Romano will be here in a little while. Just finish filling this part out on the form. He'll take it from you later." She was headed out the door before Melora could say good bye.

Melora, still shivering, pulled the blanket close around her and reached over for a tissue out of the box next to the table. She blew her nose and shivered some more, thinking wearily, oh no. Not another cold. This would be the second one this season. Melora then tried to towel her hair dry once again, wishing for a hairdryer. After filling out the form (name, date of birth, social security number, pledge to hand over first born child, etc.), she realized she hadn't gotten a hold of Serena yet, and for once wished she had a cell phone – something she had avoided so far.

The minutes dragged past as she memorized all the charts on the walls, closely scrutinizing the anatomical chart hanging next to the table for want of anything else to read. She squinted at the ankle to see what they were talking about. Hmm, the tibia and fibia fit into the talus – hey, thought Melora – that sounds a lot like talon, and was pleased to see it meant the foot. The ligaments were kind of stuck together with – collagen? Wasn't that in eye cream and stuff? Yuck.

There was still a lot of shouting going on outside the room, and through the blinds she saw many people in green and blue scrubs. They rushed around the halls and the rooms outside. Weaver rushed back and forth, once in a yellow paper gown spattered with blood. She shouted for so many things that Melora wondered how anyone could know to ask for all those things in the same breath. They didn't even seem to be words; they were abbreviations and numbers being rattled off quickly and tersely. Nurses hurled words at doctors, who responded in kind. She watched as Romano worked; she could hear bits of shouted orders now and then.

Romano moved speedily, wielding the various instruments handed to him while nurses gave him information and suctioned blood away. Another nurse occasionally dabbed away at the sweat on his forehead and he eventually slowed in his movements, the other doctor also slowing down and not so tense. Then there was a beeping sound and one of the nurses called out, "He's in V-fib!"

Romano replied "Get the crash cart stat!" The crash cart was wheeled over quickly, and he took the paddles from it as a medical student swabbed them with what seemed like a gel to Melora. "Charge to 250," he called out, then "Clear!" After the others held their hands up, he shocked the patient. "Still in v-fib," the nurse near the monitor called out. "Charge to 300," he said, and the routine was repeated until the patient stabilized. "Bag him and send him up to OR now! Go!"

Eventually, things died down more and more, and after yet another fifteen minutes, a new doctor arrived on the scene and burst into another one of the rooms, where it seemed they were gearing up to wheel a patient upstairs to the OR. Romano shook his head while snapping off his gloves and tossing them into the bin in the room, yelled across the hall to the newly arrived doctor, "Perfect timing, Mark. Where the hell were you half an hour ago? We just lost a patient. I sent the other up to OR."

"I was on location!" Greene replied tersely. "Don't blame me for things that happened while I was gone."

"Oh, yeah, you were gone. I forgot about that while I was running back and forth between two patients. I hope your situation turned out better than mine."

Greene looked like he wanted to pounce across the room, but just pulled on some gloves and retorted, "Don't blame me because you lost a patient." He glanced at the chart of the patient who died. "Shit, Romano, this guy was practically dead before he got here. That case was hopeless, and it's not my damn fault there was a pile-up and you had to work on your weekend." At that, Romano stormed out of the trauma room, nurses Yosh and Haleh quickly jumping out of his way to avoid being sucked into the wide path of his anger.

A few minutes later, the door to Exam One opened and Romano appeared, with the same sort of gown hanging over his scrubs that Weaver had. He was pulling off his bloodied paper apron as he quickly said, "Back in a few. Gotta wash up." He was still speaking the terse, abbreviated language they all seemed to speak in the ER, and disappeared just as quickly as he'd arrived. Melora nodded, then realized he had already gone and that she was agreeing with a closed door.

He reappeared shortly, composed and still in his blue surgical scrubs. "I've got your x-rays back," he told her as he pulled a file from the back of the door and slid the film onto a lightboard. Studying it, he said, "Let's see, looks good. No serious damage, no fractures or tears. Just the usual damage to the anterior ligament. We just need to wrap it up and . . . let's see what Ms. Knight wrote in her assessment." He looked at Melora over the top of the chart, and gave her an unexpected and tired smile. "She took care of you okay?"

Melora nodded, not sure what to say. He was a completely different person now from the one she'd seen interacting with others. "Yup."

"Good." Romano wasn't sure what had changed, exactly, but he thought he knew. People didn't always understand. Why should she be any different? "Not that yours is a difficult case, but she works hard." He took an Ace bandage from a box he had brought in, but before he could start, another young doctor opened the door. "Dr. Romano, Lucy said you wanted to see me."

"Ah, Dr. Carter, yes. Come in." He turned to Melora. "Pardon me yet again. I just need to have a word here." He then turned back to the other doctor, whom he took aside. "I understand you once again were unavailable to your student."

Dr. Carter looked like he was searching for something to say. He finally decided on, "I was with a patient, it needed to be finished before I could - "

"Was your patient critical?" While he spoke in tones that were not loud or angry, it was obvious that he was disturbed and trying to make a point.

"Well, he needed a burn tended to immediately."

"But was he critical?" Romano asked again.

Dr. Carter looked a bit sheepish. "I suppose he wasn't critical, exactly. But it needed to be seen to immediately."

"And did you have to be the one who did it?"

"I, well - yeah, I guess someone else could have done it."

"One more question," Romano said in even tones that sounded neither menacing nor kind, yet were stern nonetheless. "Did you give Ms. Knight a chance to even tell you what condition her patient was in?"

Dr. Carter, clearly uncomfortable with Melora's presence, just shook his head. "No."

"Okay, what I want you to realize is that her patients are your patients. You're responsible for supervising your student. We rely on our residents to be informed, and keep us informed. This is not the first time you have ignored your student's questions. Luckily, this time it wasn't critical. I just worry that someday it will be a critical patient, and she'll just have to fly out there on her own. There's really not much room for error on that point. All right?"

Dr. Carter nodded once quickly and backed slowly towards the door.

"Go on. Just remember that and don't be angry with her. She tried to cover for you." He turned away from Carter, who left as soon as he saw he was no longer being addressed.

Melora felt a little bit like she did when she was a child, and a friend's parent would scold their child in front of her. "What was that about?"

"He screwed up, I let him know, and hopefully he won't do it again. If he does, he's in very, very deep shit."

Melora gave him a dour look. "Didn't your mother ever tell you that you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar?"

He peered over at her, taking a seat on a stool in front of her. "Yeah. She also told me that when life hands you lemons, throw them at the guy who sold them to you and steal his oranges." He shook his head as she reluctantly grinned a little, despite her attempts to hide it. "Okay, she didn't say that. I did. Ms. Weir, this is no place for honey. People trust us with their health, and sometimes their lives. If we let our guard down, very bad juju jumps right in."

There was something about how he spoke now, soft and humorous but unapologetic, that made her less hesitant to speak freely. "You sure work fast in there," she remarked, gesturing towards the trauma room.

He shrugged, flashing a very brief smile. "They don't call me Rocket Romano for nothing."

She looked at him in disbelief, laughing a little. "Oh, I'll have to remember that."

"Don't make me sorry I told you that," he deadpanned.

"God, how could I not?" She stopped grinning, but the hint of a smile remained.

Romano began wrapping her ankle. "Not exactly my ideal way to spend a Friday night, in any case," he exhaled.

Melora finally spoke. "What was going on out there?"

"Triple car accident, seven victims. Most were minor injuries, but there were a few in pretty bad shape. Two are up the OR now. We lost the other critical patient. Can't do much when gray matter's involved." He shook his head as he saw her wince. "They're done with me. The scheduled attending finally got back a few minutes ago." He looked back up at her briefly. "You've got to stay off this foot for at least two or three days, and keep it elevated. Keep bandaging the ankle for compression to make the swelling go down, just like it is now – not too tight, just supportive. Be sure and ice it three or four times a day for two to fifteen minutes to reduce the swelling." He nodded towards the crutch. "Go ahead and take it. Return it when you come for re-exam."

"Re-exam?"

"Yep. Two weeks. You can just see whoever's working here. I don't normally do this sort of thing."

"I can see you don't," she told him, gesturing towards the trauma room, currently being mopped up and readied for whatever patient showed up next.

He finished wrapping the ankle. He was exhausted yet restless as the adrenaline that had been pumping earlier dissipated. He looked over his shoulder out the window. "I want to get out of here before they talk me into doing something else. I've got to change out of this, I'll be back. I'll get you home so you can change."

"Thanks," Melora said, examining her wrapped ankle. "It's really going to be fun trying to play cello with my foot up. Never tried it before."

"Then greet it as a challenge, Ms. Weir." He exited then, leaving her to pull her damp but drying hair back into a flat ponytail. She got off the table carefully, not setting her right foot down until she had the crutch in hand. She took the plastic bag containing her wet clothes and picked up her purse after donning her raincoat. Romano returned in a few minutes, hat and coat back on and anxious to leave. "Let's get out of here."


	3. Chapter 3

**Separate**

Chapter 3

Melora followed Romano out and back down to the garage. "Is it always like that?"

"No, not always," Romano responded as they got into the car. "But I'm glad I'm not in the ER anymore." He shook his head. "I'm much better at dealing with patients who have been stabilized and are completely unconscious."

Once out of the hospital and on the road, Melora told him how to get to her flat, which was quite close to the hospital. "It's . . . modest, but just big enough for us."

"Us?" Romano wondered if there was a boyfriend or a husband, then reminded himself that this was irrelevant. She was beautiful and funny and spirited and clever, but she may as well be from another planet. He was pretty sure he wasn't her type, so he didn't get his hopes up. And the fact that he might even want to _be_ in her league baffled him.

"Me, Serena and Anastasia," she replied, surprised that he was interested enough to ask questions. "They're the other cello and violin in Metronome."

"Anastasia?" Romano queried. "Russian?"

"Wow, Criswell, that's pretty good!" she laughed. "Yeah, she's been in America for about ten years, so on the few occasions she actually speaks, her accent is a symphony," Melora told him, sweeping the air gracefully with her hand. "Unfortunately, she doesn't really speak."

"Why not? Doesn't she speak English?"

Melora shrugged. "She can, she just doesn't. Not much, anyway. She doesn't really need words to communicate. She has very expressive eyes. It's mostly when she has something important she wants to say that she actually speaks out loud." Melora told him, a thoughtful look on her face. "They'll probably be at the flat now, wondering what happened to me, not to mention my ankle. You'll see what I mean about Anastasia."

Melora looked down at her ankle then, and a look of concern washed over her face. "Oh, shit."

"What?" Romano asked.

"I won't be able to work this weekend," she sighed heavily. "I wait tables, and the weekends are the big money nights. It's not much, but it helps pay the rent."

"Well, how much does it pay?" Romano asked, wondering if he should offer to compensate her for the inconvenience. _Even if_ _she_ _was the one who dashed in front of_ _me_ , he told himself.

"Like I said, not a lot," Melora replied glumly. "It's only Thursday, early Saturday and Sunday. I get around $150 a week if I'm lucky, but in the winter it's more like $125."

He briefly shot a disbelieving look of horror at her. "Christ! How do you eat?"

She gestured towards the back seat. "My wooden cash box and my overwhelming talent," she told him, a faint smile returning to her face. "It won't be so bad. I do about two shows a week for tips at coffee houses doing classical with the girls, and of course the Metronome shows. Plus, I just landed a long-term gig playing solo at a country club or something la-di-da like that. It's for Sunday brunches. It's only three hours a week but it pays enough for a week's worth of groceries."

He gave her a quizzical look. "Country club? What's it called?"

"Oh, Park something."

"Parker Aimison?"

"Yeah, that's it. I knew it had a park in there somewhere. Guess I should really remember who the hell I work for, huh?" When he didn't respond, she asked, "What? Oh, are you a member or something?"

"Or something." He did smile a little then. _Curiouser and curiouser_ , he thought. "I'm on the membership committee."

Melora laughed briefly, amused at the image of him sitting at a long table with a bunch of old white men in suits. "Aren't you a little young for that?"

"Thank you," he replied. "I'm 43. I guess that's old enough."

"But…when do you go out? You know go to the opera or whatever it is you do for fun."

The opera? He had to laugh a little. "I'm 43, Ms. Weir. I'm not a bore."

Melora thought she saw some cracks in the wall, and decided to pick at them to see if she might get through. "Hey, I like opera."

"Do you?" Romano sensed she was looking for something to run with, and decided to have a little fun with it. "Name your favorite."

"That's easy: _Madame Butterfly_. Puccini. Second favorite: _Turandot_. Also Puccini. Next question?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Huh. Good choices. I thought you were bluffing."

"Why would I do that?" Melora asked. "I compose and play music, some of it classical. I went to the Music Conservatory. Did you think I was humoring you?"

Romano shrugged. "I thought you were backpedaling from implying that I was a dull old man."

"Oh!" Now she understood. "No, no. If I wanted to imply that, I'd have been more blatant. I was just defending opera's good name and trying to figure out what you like to do."

"For fun."

"Yes. Exactly."

Romano thought for a moment. Fun? What was that? There were plenty of social outings like the one he had planned on attending tonight, but fun? Hardly. "When I'm not working, I'm usually trying to grab a few hours of sleep or walking the dog. Oh, and desperately searching for a really great historical cello band."

"Ha!" Melora really did laugh then. So there was a sense of humor hiding in there. "When you say it like that, I guess I understand why it hasn't caught on."

"Hey, you don't know that's not true, Ms. Weir." He was actually really enjoying this. She could dish it out _and_ she could take it. That was rare. Looks and brains? Maybe Corday didn't corner the market on it, after all. Just in the surgical department, perhaps.

Melora rolled her eyes dramatically. "Look, if you don't stop calling me Ms. Weir, I'm going to start calling you Rocket, and you wouldn't want that now, would you?" She was relieved when she saw him fighting a smile. "Come on, it's easy. Me-lor-a. Try it, Melllorrrraaa. Or Mel for short."

"Mel, huh? Yeah, I guess I can see that, even though you don't resemble a cantankerous diner cook," he remarked, looking at her. "Okay. _Mel_. There, was that okay?"

"Oh, so very." She applauded. "Anyway, look for me at your next Club brunch. I'll be the one with the overgrown violin."

"Not in Victorian bloomers?"

"Only by special request." Feeling proud that she'd managed to get a smile at that, she said, "So since you're not my doctor anymore, can I call you Robert? You don't look like a Rob. Definitely not a Bob. Yuck." She wrinkled her nose at the thought.

"Good instincts. Robert it is," he conceded. "Look, where are we? _Melora_?"

His face remained stony, but after just a few hours, Melora had learned how to pick jokes from his even tones. "We're almost there. It's around the corner here."

They pulled over and parked in front of a closed deli. Melora raised her eyebrows. "Rock star parking! I never can find a spot this close." She pointed above the deli. "That's our flat, upstairs." They got out and Melora, upon opening the door, looked at the stairs before her dejectedly. "Ugh. This is going to be fun."

Romano shut the door behind them. "It's not so hard, Ms. We – Melora. Just take it one step at a time, obviously putting your best foot forward."

Melora rolled her eyes at the joke and saw the deadpan face. "My goodness, Robert, you have quite a sense of humor on you." She slowly struggled up the stairs, Romano right behind her, carrying her things for her. Melora figured he wanted to make sure she could do it herself, and just stand by in case of emergency.

The door at the top of the stairs was flung open by a petite young woman with long curly blond hair and round, serious face. She was dressed for the show in black tights and a long sleeved, close-fitting top under a cotton Victorian morning dress and black waist corset. "Jesus God, Mel, we've been waiting for over an hour." She looked down at Melora's foot and then at Romano. "Oh my God, what happened? Who's he?" she asked, helping her friend into the flat and pointing towards Romano, who followed them into the flat.

"This," Melora replied, gesturing towards Romano while the small woman helped Melora slide into a chair in the living room, "is both my assailant and my savior, Dr. Robert Romano."

Romano looked uncomfortable in these strange surroundings; the flat was small, dimly lit and warm, with candles all around. The walls were a deep burgundy with black trim. Books and records and CDs covered the shelves and antique-looking furniture decorated the room. Slow, dirgey music played softly on the stereo, and a tall, gaunt looking woman with very long, straight, black hair sat on the sofa in a long burgundy velvet dress and big black boots, tuning a violin. She reminded Romano of Morticia Addams. He waved a brief hello as he removed his hat, coat and gloves. "Uh, hello." He felt out of place here, a jarring feeling that he wasn't really used to.

Melora pointed to the small blond woman and said, "This is Serena Moray, fellow cellist and lead singer of Metronome. And that lovely creature over there," Melora continued, pointing to the tall woman, "is Anastasia Glushkoff – or Ana – our violinist." Anastasia bowed her head, smiling, as Melora turned to her friends. "I knocked right into him with my cello case. That's how the ankle thing happened."

Serena sighed, "Again? I told you if you didn't look where you're going, you'd kill someone. And you almost killed yourself."

Melora shrugged. "Not unless they start making the pavement out of knives. Anyway, he's a surgeon over at County, so he took me in and patched me up personally. And he brought me home to change, too."

Romano replied, "Well, it looks as if you've got things under control, so I'll be on my way." Feeling as if he was intruding on a scene that wasn't his, he stood.

But Melora would have none of it. "But don't you want to see us practice? You know, see what you're missing?" She stood up then, with the aid of her crutch. She wasn't sure why she wanted him to stay, but she did. The idea that this sharp-witted man who was so different from all her other friends was about to walk out of the door forever alarmed her far more than she thought it would. "At least wait until I have a chance to take a quick, very hot shower and change before you go. I'd hate for your last vision of me to be in scrubs."

Romano, reassured that he wasn't intruding, shrugged. "I won't argue with that."

Serena smirked, "I was going to ask, so – hey, where are your clothes?"

"In here," Melora told her, handing the bag to Serena sadly. "Estimate the damage while I'm gone." She moved off in the direction of the hallway, ducking into her room to grab some clothes before heading for the bathroom.

Serena dug through the bag and pulled out the soaked corset, the custom-made garment fully water stained. "No!" she gasped sadly. "Oh God, do you know how much this cost?"

"Four hundred dollars?" Romano ventured, sitting down on a large overstuffed chair across from Anastasia.

Serena squinted at him. "How did you know?"

Anastasia, without looking up, gestured towards the bathroom before going back to stringing the A string on her violin. Serena said knowingly, "Ohhhh, Melora told you."

"Yes," Romano replied. "She was hoping to salvage it."

"Well, good luck," Serena groaned. "Oh, she will be pissed. Not a pretty sight."

"I know. I've seen it." He had an idea then. "Look, I can have it replaced."

Serena shook her head. "It was doomed before it ever got to the bus. She should have known better than to wear it outside in the rain in that sorry excuse for a raincoat," she sighed, setting down the bag of wet clothing. "At least the rest of this stuff will be okay. Eventually."

Romano shook his head. "At least as a gesture. For the ankle. And the money she'll lose not working."

Anastasia looked up briefly, her eyes shining with a smile to them. Romano looked down again quickly, as though she was seeing something she should not have. She diplomatically returned her gaze to the violin, plucking out a chord and turning the peg until it was in tune.

Serena finally said, as he got out his checkbook and gold pen, "Look, don't feel responsible. Like I said, it's her own fault. You don't need to –"

"I know I don't need to, Ms. Moray. But I can afford to be without $600 more than she can. That's how much I spend eating out in a month." Romano continued writing out a check to "cash". "So just replace the corset, and be sure that this money covers her expenses for the next week. And – " He looked up then, as if to emphasize his words, "- make absolutely certain that she takes it easy on her ankle. Even when she plays."

Serena reluctantly accepted the check. "Okay, okay."

Romano saw a tiny smile twitching to free itself at the corner of Ana's mouth, but she did not look away from the violin and then the twitch was gone. They heard the water stop and the hair dryer come back on in a few minutes. Serena looked at him more closely. "You realize she's going to try and give it back."

He did know that, and said, "Just cash it. Make something up. Surprise tax refund, low-paying lottery ticket, whatever. As long as she makes rent and has enough to eat till she's better."

Serena once again looked at him. "Just don't get any ideas, Doc."

"What ideas would those be?" He knew, but it was kind of fun verbally sparring with these women.

Serena laughed once. "You're really not expecting anything in return?"

"Not if it's kept anonymous. Otherwise, I'd have just given it to her directly, Ms. Moray."

This seemed to satisfy Serena. "The name is Serena. And if you call Ana Ms. Glushkoff, she will wordlessly smack you, guaranteed." She looked thoughtful for a moment. "So you're a surgeon? Sounds intense." She smiled a little, as if thinking of something amusing. "Bet you didn't imagine you'd be here tonight!"

"I did not," Romano conceded, although he had to admit to himself that in this case, the unexpected turn that the evening was taken was more than welcome. If he'd seen these women walking down the street, he'd have never thought them half as interesting as he did now, after being more or less forced to interact with them.

Eventually, Melora came out, cheeks rosy from the warm shower, dressed in black tights and a black, long-sleeved dress that came a bit lower than mid-calf, and a sort of white, gauzy pinafore over it. She still wore slippers, however. Her long, platinum hair was down now, the light curls at the ends restored and a small bit of hair on either side braided together at the back. The light make-up she wore emphasized her better features, and the dark red lipstick she wore was the only truly outstanding difference. "I couldn't figure out if these were okay to wear. Robert?" She held up yet another pair of boots.

 _She's asking me?_ he thought to himself, looking at petite woman before him as she casually inquired about shoes. She was beautiful, and she had his attention. But why was she… _oh_ , he thought, _she must want to know what would be best for her ankle_. "Uh, yes. Shoes…"

He took a moment to answer, once again causing Anastasia to look up and briefly study him as he looked at Melora. "Yes, those should be fine." They all looked at him strangely then, and he added, "As long as they're not too tight, boots will be supportive." He took a second look at the ankle to make sure it was properly wrapped.

"Let's finish you up and go over the two new songs before we go. I want to make sure the timing is right."


	4. Chapter 4

**Separate**

Chapter 4

Finally ready to practice, Serena and Melora got their cellos out and seated themselves next to each other; Ana stood and moved next to them, both graceful and gaunt.

Melora suggested, "Let's start with 'Faute de Mieux.' We haven't played it in public yet."

Romano raised an eyebrow, and Melora caught it, commenting, "Ah-ha! We have your interest?"

"For lack of something better," he replied, offering a tiny smile as he both answered her question and translated the phrase. Even Ana laughed at that, her tones rich and deep. He felt a little pride at having gotten an audible response from the silent Russian. "Please, go on."

What happened next was music unlike any Romano had heard before. It had the beauty of classical strings and yet a frenetic energy as the bows danced swiftly – sometimes roughly for a harder sound - across the strings. It had a definite alternative feel with poetic, intelligent, clever and often humorous lyrics and arrangements. Melora sang the first one; while the pace was quick, she carried the melody in rich lilting tones. Serena sang the next song, her own singing voice an octave higher than Melora's, creating a perfect harmony when the two women sang together. There were a few missed cues and skipped beats, but the women worked at smoothing out all the issues. Romano was catching on to what Melora meant about Ana; she had no trouble indicating her solutions to troublesome timing with music and gestures rather than words.

It was a short rehearsal, but it left Romano wondering what in hell he'd been missing all this time. Would it be worth feeling horribly out of place just to see and hear more at the show? This was the question he struggled with, and it was one he hadn't concerned himself with for many years. He'd fought for years to get to a position in life where he honestly didn't give a rat's ass what anybody thought of him. But was he willing to move outside of his comfort zone? He'd always thought of himself as an ambitious risk-taker, willing to take chances if the payoff was worth it. So far, he felt some sort of acceptance by these women, but he wasn't sure it how far it would extend out in the real world. Or rather, _their_ world.

Still, he had to wonder what this music might sound like in a larger space, amplified and with drums. They had wrapped up by 8:30, and Melora felt almost awkward asking Romano, "So, will you come to the show?"

Did she really want him to come, he wondered, or was she just being polite? Wouldn't it potentially damage her street cred if she showed up with a balding man in a suit? Or would nobody really care? "Well, I don't know where this place is," he replied slowly, giving her a chance to seize the out.

Melora shook her head. "Oh, it's okay. I'll go in your car with you – Serena can take my cello in the station wagon."

"Thanks for asking," Serena quipped, pulling on her coat.

Melora cocked her head and asked innocently, "Oh, Serenabelle?"

"Yes, dearest Melorabelle?" Serena fluttered her eyelashes in what was clearly an established routine the two had.

"Would you mind taking the cello in the wagon for me?"

"It would be my pleasure," Serena replied pleasantly with a wink. Robert carried Melora's cello down for her after she'd put on a very warm, dry coat this time.

Once inside the car and on their way, Melora told him, "Thanks for taking a chance on us, Robert. It'll probably be a different scene for you, but I wouldn't have asked you if I thought you wouldn't enjoy yourself." She hoped he did, anyway. He was so different from her usual invited guests; nearly all of her friends were, to a certain extent, fairly alternative in look, fashion and/or lifestyle. Most had at least one tattoo visible, wore a lot of black or dark colors, and/or would not be caught dead in a nice suit. But she was growing tired of the attitude that one's dress style defined who they were. She'd had next to no money as a teen and shopped at thrift stores out of necessity, not to be hip. Now, she knew a lot of people in the music scene who paid exorbitant amounts of money to appear "punk rock" without having to adhere to any sort of personal code. Judging someone based on what they wore was as abhorrent to her as judging them based on their social class or skin color. And after seeing Robert handle himself at work, she thought he'd not be bothered by a few doubtful stares.

As for Robert, he was quiet, wondering exactly what he was getting himself into. Was this going to be like going to those torturous prep school dances where he felt compelled to ingratiate himself with the cool kids? Hell, no, he thought. Then again, he could leave if he hated it. He would be on her turf, so to speak, and he had no idea what to expect from it. But he did want to see it, and to see who she was within it.

Melora took his silence as an acceptance of her comment and asked, "So what kind of surgery do you do?"

"The kind with blood," he deadpanned, before adding, "I specialize in cardiothoracic surgery, the heart and upper torso area. But I do whatever needs to be done. And what do you specialize in?"

She laughed. "All things cello-related. Although apparently, I need to work on my ability to walk a bit more."

"Practice makes perfect," he responded. "You sounded great up there. And you're right – it really defies simple categorization."

"Thank you," Melora said, pleased that he seemed to genuinely like it. "Someone suggested we bill ourselves as avant-garde, but I think it's a bit of reach. I don't think we're art school enough for that."

"You wrote a funny song about Hieronymus Bosch, Mel. If that isn't avant-garde, I don't know what is."

The simple joke felt so natural and true that it was almost as if they'd had this very conversation before. Melora just shrugged. "Humor is allowed to be avant-garde?"

"If it's intelligent humor," he replied.

"How long have you been playing?"

"Since I was nine or ten. It took quite a while before I could play without inducing winces throughout the household. 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' was kind of my jam for a while there."

He remembered his own sister's tortured attempts at the violin, and understood completely. "You grew up in Chicago?"

"No. I grew up in suburban Milwaukee, mostly. Until I was twelve." She looked out the window, almost as if looking for a simple answer to that question. "Things were very normal for me until my dad and I moved out here to Chicago." Without allowing time for a follow-up question, she quickly asked, "What made you want to be a doctor?"

He wondered what more there was to the story, but for now, he let it go and considered the question at hand. "It was better than being a lawyer. And the family business was way too boring to get into."

"Now I have to know! What's your family into? Stocks? Bonds?" She tried to think of something even more distasteful. "Robert, were they furriers?"

He laughed a bit at that, casting a sideways glance at her. "Actually, you're not too far off."

Melora let out a surprised gasp and had to think: what was close to furriers? "Um, tanners? Slaughterhouse workers?"

He shook his head. "My mother came from old meat-packing industry money in New York. My father was a butcher when she met him and they eloped. She was nearly disowned for that, but he became something of a war hero in Korea, so they grudgingly accepted him and cut him into the family business."

"'Cut him in'?" Melora grinned at the pun.

"No pun intended," he assured her, but smiled nonetheless. "Anyway, it turned out he ended up surpassing expectations with his ability to sit in an office and delegate his duties to all the best people. Made him look good. The last thing I wanted was to follow him there, so…"

Melora wasn't sure that was the only reason. "But medicine seems like such a daunting profession."

"But it's also exciting and often ground-breaking," he countered. "Meat, on the other hand…more guts, no glory." As they drove, he tried redirecting the line of questioning. "So, were you in love with the cello from the start?"

"No!" Melora laughed easily. "I honestly hated it for the first year, and barely agreed to keep playing the second year. My mother insisted."

"So, what made you a true believer in the power of strings?"

Her smile faded a bit, and here they were again: the ugly truth. "Things kind of fell apart at home when I was twelve. The cello was the only thing I had left from my old life. Playing the music, practicing, getting better, learning more complicated music theory, and eventually writing it…it was sheer stubbornness to start, a refusal to let go. Then it became a way of escaping reality as well as a challenge. And now…now it's just like breathing. I can't imagine my life without it. Is it like that with you and medicine?"

"Yes. That's actually almost exactly it," he replied softly, surprised that she hit the nail on the head so perfectly. He couldn't have explained it better. An escape route turned challenge and now, practically an involuntary reflex."

"I think that's what's known as a calling," Melora chuckled, seeing that he was surprised at how much he fit the bill. "At least you didn't say you went into medicine to 'help people'. I mean, obviously you're helping people. But that seems consequential rather than a starting point."

"Thank you!" he agreed enthusiastically, adding, "I am so sick of reading applications from med students who go on and on about how they want to be a doctor to help people. Naturally – _everyone_ wants to help people in their job. Even stock brokers are looking out for their investors' money, if they're doing it right. But being a doctor? It demands a lot more than a vague and squishy desire to help people."

Melora liked his use of the word "squishy" here. "So, your family's from New York, then?"

He nodded. "Manhattan. Upper East Side. You know - your basic concrete block father, nice enough mom, kid sister."

Melora knew a smokescreen when it was being blown her way. "Okay. How'd you end up out here?"

"Oh, the road to Chicago was littered with detours and potholes. The main reason I came to Chicago was a fellowship at Mercy Hospital in my specialty, and from there, I got a surgical residency at Cook County General."

"Well, _that_ certainly is a skeletal story," Melora remarked with a chuckle.

"Hey, you asked how I ended up in Chicago." He knew how to answer a question completely but minimally.

Melora rethought her question. "Okay. So what was it that made you think, 'Wow! Cook County General is totally where I want to be'?"

Robert did smile then. "I had it on good authority that I'd be able to write my own ticket there. And if I played my cards right, I might make Associate Chief of Surgery in a few years. Turns out it only took three or four to make Chief of Surgery and Chief of Staff. So…whether that's a good or bad thing remains to be seen. Nowhere to go but sideways…or down."

Melora wasn't sure what that meant, but she was at least learning how to craft questions that would yield more satisfying answers. "And what does it mean to be Chief?"

"Chief of Staff? Or Surgery?"

Melora shrugged. "Both."

"It means endless amounts of paperwork. Reports, statistics, budgets and more meetings than anyone should have to attend. But it also means I get dibs."

"Dibs? On what?" She thought she was getting close to the crux of it.

"Just about everything that matters. Research projects, picking the best team members, schedules, equipment. I can make sure that I get the surgeons on my teams who aren't afraid to take solid risks and make good judgment calls. I get dibs on being the best at this job. The guts _and_ the glory, so to speak. I mean, it wasn't easy to get to where I am. People don't like me much. And I honestly don't care – it's not a popularity contest. But it's worth it."

Melora wasn't sure if he was saying he wanted the best for his patients or he loved being the best at his job. Sounded like a little bit of both. "Okay, so here's what I've really been wondering."

He couldn't resist. "Yes, this is my real hair."

That got a laugh out of Melora, but she asked anyway. "So how do you do it?"

Robert furrowed his brow. Did he miss something? "Do what?"

"Operate on people! Like, actual humans. It sounds terrifying to me. And when somebody doesn't make it, like earlier…"

Robert hadn't really ever considered what surgery might seem like to regular people. He shrugged. "The idea of surgery itself has never been a problem for me. I always thought of it as fairly straightforward. If you know your anatomy and prepare for your procedure, and if you have good teachers, it doesn't need to be terrifying. As long as you can separate the surgeon from the man, and the patient from the person."

"Separate?" She looked at him dubiously. "Those things sound like they're quite entangled."

Robert thought about it. "Maybe physically. Sure. But not, you know, mentally. Emotionally." Ugh, did he just use the word "emotionally"? Quick, say something else! "Look, when you cut into someone, you only have part of the story. When you open them up, you can see what is actually happening. And a lot of times, it's not what you expected to find. Sometimes, especially in trauma cases, it doesn't matter how good you are. If there's too much damage to support life, you have to let it go. And you have a harder time doing that if you think of the patient as a real person with a life and hopes and dreams. That would actually probably be terrifying. When I operate, it's on a patient. End of story."

"Are there cases that haunt you, though?"

Robert thought it over. Of course, there were tons! But he wasn't sure if they defined "haunted" in the same way. "It's often tempting to ask yourself what you might have done differently to achieve a better outcome, and it's a good thing to do if what you're attempting to do is learn. But trying to save dead patients in your head is a fool's game, Mel."

"So you do your best and hopefully save a life," Melora concluded. "But when they don't make it…" She thought of how angry he'd been after losing a patient in the ER earlier.

"If they don't make it, it can be intensely frustrating. I can remember thinking so many times, if only I had more hands and a little more time… but you have to know when to call it and move on. You get to a point where it just becomes clear that they're gone, no matter how much you want things to be different. You just can't let yourself get emotionally invested. That's what I mean by keeping it separate. There's me, and there's the surgeon."

She nodded. It made sense. She wanted to ask more questions, but she knew they were getting close to the club now and it probably wasn't a great idea to keep on the deep and dark this close to showtime. So she wisely opted for humor. "You know, I read once that many surgeons who are very good at compartmentalization are often just highly functional psychopaths."

He glanced at her, saw her grin, and deadpanned, "Damn. You caught me."

Melora laughed then, before seeing the club up the block. "Oh, slow down! Here it is!"


	5. Chapter 5

**Separate**

Chapter 5

They pulled over outside a club called The Skeleton Key, located in the Wicker Park area of W. North Ave. and Milwaukee. The exterior was fairly nondescript – just another brick building with shaded windows almost covered in flyers for various bands. Inside, it seemed quite small by the bar, but then opened up to a larger back room, with a small and only slightly raised stage and a larger bar. A few tables surrounded the dance floor, and they headed for a relatively quieter table in the back. The band onstage – The Witch Doctors – was playing '60s style garage music, heavy on the old Vox organ. There were a lot of retro hipsters and mod kids dancing in front of the stage, with an eclectic mix of people from apparently all walks of life: aging beatniks, older punks, a few rockabilly kids, loads of college kids in jeans and t-shirts, and quite a few goths. Melora frowned when she realized they'd missed most of the current set. "I love these guys!"

Robert reminded her, "It's not like you could do a lot of dancing."

Melora noticed he opted for keeping on his coat and hat, obviously not yet feeling comfortable enough to lose either. She nodded with a smile at his comment, reaching over and tipping his hat back a bit. He had to smile back at her – she definitely wasn't acting as uncertain as she'd been at the hospital. And why should she? She was in her element here, and he was the outsider.

Robert noticed a huge and ornate antique chandelier hanging above them, and an upstairs area looking down on the stage and dance floor. That explained it, he thought – this was one of the old Chicago ballrooms; likely a former speakeasy. He'd heard about them but never had been in one.

Serena and Anastasia arrived with the cellos as a young man dressed in black jeans, t-shirt and black suspenders approached them all. "Finally!" he said in an exasperated tone. "Do you know I've been waiting for you guys since 6:30? Where were you?"

Melora replied, "Twisting my ankle. Joey, this is Robert Romano, the kind doctor who helped me. Robert, this is Joey Marsh, our good and patient drummer. Sorry, Joey. I was detained."

Joey quickly shook Romano's hand before dismissing him. "Great. Can you play with your ankle busted?"

"It's not busted, it's sprained. And yes, I can play. We worked out a thing. Ana?"

Ana withdrew the low footstool from a bag they'd brought in, presenting it like a prize Joey had just won.

"Voila," Melora said smartly. "What's the sitch here?"

"These guys have about two songs left, and then I gotta set up, so twenty minutes, tops."

"Joey, calm down," Serena told him. "You're the only one with an instrument that actually needs setting up. We've got strings, for God's sake."

He shrugged. "There's still the mics. I'm not doing everything around here, you know. You guys do your own sound checks."

Anastasia rolled her eyes and shot him a look, to which he replied, "Look who's talking!" At that point, Joey's face dropped as he realized what he had said, and they all lost it then. Ana smiled, and Robert sensed that this had been her intent all along. Ana looked over at Robert and, catching his look, gave a tiny nod.  
"Sit down," Serena told Melora. "I'll get you a drink. How about you, Doc? We get drink tickets, so it's free."

"Just a club soda, thanks. Driving."

Melora turned to Serena. "I'd like a lemon drop, please."

"I figured." Serena went to get the drinks. Robert was still scanning the room. He smelled cigarette smoke and old spilled beer, but oddly, felt no inclination to leave. Melora could see that while not entirely comfortable outside of his world, he had the same look on his face that he'd had at her flat; it essentially said I've Got This.

Robert hadn't been in a dive bar nightclub for ages. Maybe since he was an intern in the goddam '80s. He'd been so damn busy that he'd forgotten they even existed. Either that, or he'd assumed they held nothing of interest anymore. But looking to his current table companion, he realized he may have jumped to the wrong conclusion. Sitting there, somewhat hobbled, she held court while several different friends and admirers came over to say hello and chit-chat briefly; it seemed that Metronome had quite a following, and from all walks of life. It was too loud to really hear what was being said, if anything. Most greetings were a brief hug and inquiry about the crutch and ankle, and Robert looked on as Melora explained into the ear of her visitor, gesturing towards him. The listener would smile and shake his hand – perhaps congratulations on a job well done? He had no idea.

Once the Witch Doctors wrapped up their set, it became possible to have an actual conversation. Melora sipped at her drink as the menagerie of well-wishers drifted off to the bar to load up before Metronome took to the stage. "Are you hating this?" she said, bracing herself.

"Not at all," Robert assured her. And surprisingly, it was the truth. "I'd kind of forgotten about places like this. Cheap beer, loud music – takes me back."

"Some things don't change," she said. "This gets old after a while. Trust me, there was a reason why you stopped going. Don't get me wrong – I love playing these shows but some nights I just want to play and run. You know – separate the musician from the sleepy woman."

"I get that reference." Robert shrugged out of his overcoat then and placed the hat on the table, hoping it was at least sort of clean.

Ana joined them at the table then, gesturing for Melora to join Serena onstage. "Sound check and footstool positioning, it looks like," Melora remarked to Robert. "Be back in flash. And yes, I will be careful."

That was when Robert found himself seated alone with Ana. At first he wasn't sure what to say, and then realized that maybe this was exactly why she chose not to speak. "I never was a fan of small talk."

She gave a half-smile then, shaking her head as if in agreement on the subject. She then pointed to the stage, where Melora assisted in positioning her two microphones. "Thank you," she said. Her voice was deep and rich, and her accent made it somehow even richer.

Robert raised an eyebrow, quite surprised that she deemed him word-worthy. "You mean the ankle? Of course. Anyone can wrap an ankle."

She shook her head slightly once more, adding, "You stay. You give check but take no credit. You do not look at watch." She took a sip of her red wine.

Robert had absolutely no idea what to say to this. She was right – he was still here and had no intention of going anywhere. To him, it was quite simple. It wasn't every day that he got invited by a beautiful younger woman to hear her band. He'd be an idiot to go anywhere at this point. And the check? "I didn't want her to think I was expecting something in return."

Ana nodded, indicating that she understood this. "Is unusual for man, Robert."

"That's because a lot of men are idiots," he replied easily.

She laughed once, nodding. "Very true."

He gave her an apprising look. "I thought you didn't like to talk."

She shook her head, gesturing towards the stage. "I see you watch her. And you do not see, but she watch you, too." She paused, as if debating whether to continue. "She's had very difficult life. Deserves better." Melora was hobbling back over towards the table on her crutch.

"Okay." Robert wasn't really sure what the message was, exactly. It sounded like Ana was jumping the gun a bit here. Or was she? She clearly saw something that she thought was important enough to bring up. And it was nice to know that Melora might actually be interested…unless Ana had a cruel sense of humor. Maybe he should go against his better judgment and see if she might want to go out with him sometime. The idea had already occurred to him, but he'd nixed it; their worlds were so different it would probably be doomed. But still… maybe Ana saw something that he did not.

Melora was back at the table, then. "We're on in five." Ana nodded, resuming her wordless persona once more, nodding at Robert and leaving the table.

Robert asked Melora, "How long have you guys known each other?"

"Ana?" Melora took her seat once again for the moment, finishing her lemon drop. "We were at the Music Conservatory together, so about ten years. I met both her and Serena there. Am I wrong, or was she actually conversing with you?"

"She was. I felt…honored. And you're right about her voice."

Melora smiled. "People always say that. What did she say?"

Robert paused, trying to figure out what he could say without revealing too much. "She said that I am 'unusual for man'." He said the last bit with an imitation of her accent, which got an easy laugh from Melora.

But before they could speak further, his pager went off. _Damn! Really? Right now?_ "Excuse me," he said, fishing it out of his suit pocket and glancing at it. "Cardio 911." _Great._ "I'm sorry, but this probably means I need to go. They know better than to page me for anything other than a patient emergency." He watched as her face fell. "Believe me, I'd really rather not."

Melora looked a little down at the news. "Oh, um, yeah, of course. Okay."

"But is can I get a raincheck? I mean, would you like to get together again, outside of ankle-related mishaps?"

She smiled. "What? No waiting three days before calling?"

"Well, I don't have your number and I need to run. No time for games."

"Well, yes. Of course I'd like to see you again." She was almost as surprised that he was asking as he was. "Give me a pen."

He reached into his suit coat's inner pocket and withdrew his pen, handing it to her. "Why?" he asked, before he could stop himself.

"Why the pen or why do I want to see you?"

"The latter."

Without even thinking about it, she told him. "Because you're different. 'Unusual for man'." She scribbled her number on a cocktail napkin and slid both it and the pen back to him.

 _Wait a second_ , Robert thought as he pocketed the pen and napkin. _I'm sitting here with this beautiful woman who's wearing something from another era and plays cello in a band…but I'm the one who's different?_ Then again, it was true. At least, in this nightclub he was definitely different.

She smiled at his puzzled look, realizing that she was even more charmed by him than she'd initially thought. Maybe it was the fact that he wasn't playing it distant or cool like most other men did. "Look, I know you probably don't want anyone at your hospital to know it, but you're a good man. I see you, hiding in there." She spoke in a confidential whisper, ignoring Serena, who waved at her to join them onstage.

"I thought I was a psychopath?" he joked, standing and pulling on his coat and hat.

"Nope. But don't worry – your secret is safe with me." She stood, Robert giving her a hand-up and her crutch. She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek before she could overthink it. "Now, go save that patient. You know where to find me."

 _Huh_ , he thought, a bit stunned. That was unexpected… but the nicest sort of unexpected. He watched her make her way to the stage, cursing the timing of whoever was paging him. Then again, would he have been so up-front if he'd known he had another few hours here? Or if Ana had said nothing? Probably not. "Good night," he said quietly, even though she was far out of earshot by then.

A suited mod kid standing near Robert looked over his shoulder, English cigarette in hand. "What'd you say?"

Robert shook his head. "Nice suit," he added before heading towards the exit. He heard his pager going off again, and went out to his car, where he could return the call in relative quiet.


	6. Chapter 6

**Separate**

Chapter 6

Robert was awakened Saturday around noon by his dog Gretel's gentle nudging. He'd gotten home from the hospital at about four a.m. Saturday, and had simply fed her breakfast early and made sure the dog door was unlocked before collapsing on the bed, exhausted. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept so many hours in a row at once. Hopefully, he'd have the remainder of the weekend free from work.

Then he remembered all that had transpired the night before. He honestly had to think for a moment: did that really happen? Or was it some sort of dream? _Nope_ , he thought, as his waking mind grew rooted once more in reality. _That really happened._

He quickly dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved black pullover, feeling the chill of the winter air now as Gretel followed him around the room, eager to go for a walk and smell all her usual neighborhood haunts. "Okay, okay," Robert yawned, pulling on some socks and a pair of snow boots before remembering that he'd left Melora's number in his suit coat pocket. Where the hell did he leave it? He located it downstairs in the kitchen, and ensured that the cocktail napkin was safely where he'd left it. He glanced at Gretel, remembering her propensity for eating tissue paper of any kind, and shook his head reproachfully. "You are not getting your paws on this one!" he proclaimed as the Bouvier tilted her head at her owner, puzzled. He placed it far enough away from where any counter-surfing dog might reach and put on her leash. "I don't think 'the dog ate your number' is a passable excuse these days."

As he walked Gretel towards the nearest park, he mulled over the events of the previous evening, trying to see if he'd missed something that should slow his urge to pick up the phone and call Melora. True, they'd gotten off to a rocky start, but that was understandable. She'd gone quiet at the hospital, but then, that wasn't unusual for one unused to its chaotic nature. He remembered assuming that her silence was a sign of personal disapproval, but now he realized that might not be the case.

She seemed sure of herself outside of the ER, though, with a quick wit and educated mind, despite her mention of a rough patch growing up. That reminded him of what Ana had said about a 'very difficult' past, and he wondered what that had entailed. Something had happened that took her from the relative ease of suburban Milwaukee to Southside Chicago with her father. Maybe her parents split up? But then, where was her mother? Did she mention any siblings? Damn, he couldn't remember.

He'd walked all the way to the park before realizing he'd been lost in thought about this girl whom he'd only just met as if she was a puzzle that needed solving and not a real human being. _Way to overthink it_ , he told himself. Letting Gretel off-leash to go and greet one of her favorite doggie playmates, Robert wondered just how wise it would be to try and start something with Melora. The age difference wasn't that great – she looked to be perhaps thirty and old enough to have a grasp on what she wanted from life. She was certainly independent enough and didn't seem to be the demanding or clingy sort. Would he be able to hold the interest of someone like her, he wondered. He worked constantly, and got paged away often enough for this aspect to have killed several attempts at relationships already. Then again, those had been doomed for other reasons.

He'd almost talked himself out of it, but then remembered what Ana had said: _You do not see it, but she watches you, too._ And he pictured her there, sitting across from him, and replayed how her expression went from smiling to sullen when he told her he had to leave. That was what made him finally decide to go ahead and given her a call. If she hadn't been interested, she wouldn't have given him her number, after all. Besides, it was just a date, not a marriage proposal. No big deal, right? Just make the call, he told himself.

So once he'd gotten Gretel home and had a very late brunch of coffee and a bagel, Robert picked up the phone and called the number scribbled on the cocktail napkin. He didn't allow himself any time to pre-plan what he was going to say; he preferred thinking on the fly. It felt more genuine when he didn't think too much about a thing.

"Hullo?" Melora answered.

Easily identifying the voice, Romano gave her his best serious voice. "Is this Ms. Weir?"

He could hear her laugh softly. "It is! Is this Doctor Robert "the Rocket" Romano, Chief of Surgery and Chief of Staff, Esquire?"

He smiled. "The same. And how are you this afternoon?"

"Barely awake. Still in my jammies, having coffee and ignoring my laundry."

"Good! You're supposed to rest that ankle."

"I would be a fool to waste such a perfectly legitimate excuse. How did your emergency go last night?"

"It all ended well, but it was a doozy. A bypass scheduled for Monday became an urgent triple bypass. It was touch and go for a while, but we got the job done. Didn't get home till around four, though."

"And your first thought upon waking was to call me!" she said playfully. "Or maybe the third or fourth. I'm guessing you don't sleep in as late as I do."

"Today, I probably did. Gretel woke me up at noon." Gretel, napping on her bed by the fireplace, looked up momentarily upon hearing her name.

"Gretel?"

He realized how that might have sounded, and quickly replied, "My dog. She's pretty insistent about her walks."

Melora gasped. "You have a dog? What sort? Big or little?" She sounded almost like a kid now.

 _Bonus points for liking the dog_. "Big. She's a Bouvier. They look sort of like giant Schnauzers."

"Fantastic! Our family had a Great Dane when I was very little. I remember taking naps with him on the living room floor." She smiled at the memory and sipped at her coffee on her end of the phone call. "Well, I just got up half an hour ago. What are you up to, now that Gretel's been walked?"

"I have a mountain of paperwork to deal with just now. But as for later…I was wondering if you have plans this evening, or if you were up for being wined and dined?"

"Wow, I don't know that I've ever been asked that particular question," Melora replied with a small laugh. "But the answer is a resounding yes. I am always up for dinner with one so 'unusual for man'," she added, complete with faux Russian accent. Truthfully, she'd planned on staying home and maybe watching a video with the girls, if they were in. But this sounded a thousand times more interesting.

 _So far, so good_ , he thought. Encouraged, he asked, "How do you feel about Italian food?"

"I feel very much in favor of Italian food."

"Italian it is, then."

"How fancy do I need to be? Not at all, moderately, or super-fancy?" She was mentally running through outfits she might wear.

"A moderate amount of fancy should suffice. I was thinking about The Rosebud on W. Taylor."

"Oooo, I like that train of thought! I've always wanted to go there."

"Great. I'll pick you up at your place at seven?"

"I'll be here. I'll even try and dress up the crutch a bit so I don't look too pathetic." She paused for another sip of coffee before adding, "Oh, and Dr. Romano?"

"Yes, Ms. Weir?"

Her voice took on a conspiratorial whisper then, just as it had back at the table the night before. "I'm so glad you called."

Robert smiled at that. "Me, too. See you later, Mel."

 _Damn_ , he thought to himself, hanging up the phone. _We've already got in-jokes._

This was going to be good.

True to her word, Melora had covered the foam pads of the crutch's pillow and grip with silken black scarves, she explained, "to match my dress, like fancy camouflage." Her dress, unlike her performance costume, was not exactly Victorian, but more of a 1940's style retro black dress with velvet trim and beaded shoes that were kind to injured ankles while still looking good. Robert was also looking his best in a black suit and tie and burgundy shirt. In short, both were dressed to kill.

They'd chatted away much of the appetizers course, discussing music and hospital politics, respectively. Finally, as the main course was served, Robert decided to take a chance. "I was honestly surprised to find that you didn't already have plans tonight. Or at least several back-burnered suitors."

Melora grinned. "Confidentially, yours was not the only invitation I received. It was, however, the only one that appealed to me."

This interested Robert. "Really? And why is that?"

Melora easily replied, "Loads of reasons." She let that one sit, knowing he'd not be satisfied with it.

"One of which might be…" he led.

"You're highly intelligent. You're very funny. You exist outside of the music scene, and seem to have no interest in becoming a part of it. You have a life and a very interesting one at that. You're a responsible person and not an overgrown, self-obsessed man-child. You don't play stupid dating games. You know what you want and don't apologize for it." She paused to take a bite of her food.

"Is that all?" he deadpanned.

"Those are the highlights. Oh! And you have a dog. That's a huge bonus for me." Now it was her turn to say it all with a straight face. "I do get asked out a lot, Robert. But the older I get, the more discriminating I become."

"I don't know," Robert replied. "You say 'self-obsessed man-child' like it's a bad thing."

She laughed a little. "It does wear on a girl."

"You had a lot of fans last night."

"Most of those were friends and acquaintances. Fans are too scared to approach in person. And don't get me wrong – I'm grateful for fans, but dating one would be like…well, probably like a doctor dating a patient. Ethically questionable."

"Good thing I'm not your doctor," he replied as the waiter stopped by to refill their wine glasses. He thought he understood what she was saying.

"The music scene is no place to seek romance. Again, just as in your field. Do you like hanging out with other surgeons on your downtime?"

Robert made a face. "God, no. Save for a few that I've known for a while, not really. I respect a lot of them, and I might even admire their work. But I hate golf and making small talk with egos. It's hard enough keeping my own ego appeased."

Melora gestured in a there-you-go sort of flourish. "Let me ask you: what prompted you to break with habit and ask me out instead of going to sleep at a reasonable hour after a long day of sorting through paperwork?"

 _Because I'm not dead_ , he thought to himself. "Can I take a page out of your book and say it's because you're different?"

She had to smile at that. Robert noticed that when she smiled and laughed tonight, he could see it travel to her eyes. He hadn't noticed that last night. "Different isn't always a good thing."

"Why the hell not?" He wasn't sure if she was being serious. "Difference is challenging, sure, but it can be eye-opening, too."

"Example?" she prompted, taking a sip of her wine.

"Well, let's say – just for the sake of argument - that one person lives in a world of science, facts, numbers and medicine. And they meet someone entirely by accident who lives in a world of art and culture and music. It might just seem like a breath of fresh air to both."

This seemed to satisfy her. "Huh. Well put. I accept your hypothesis."

"Plus…corsets."

Melora laughed then, not expecting that bit of honesty. "I agree. There's a lot to be said for a well-worn corset. I have no idea how women wore them daily back in the day, though. It's a miracle if I can get through half an evening in one."

"Fainting rooms."

She looked at him quizzically. "Excuse me?"

"Most of the upper class homes back then had fainting rooms for visiting women whose corsets were taking a toll on them."

Melora blinked at him. "You know about fainting rooms?"

"Of course I do. What can I say? I'm interested in architecture."

Melora, having recovered from hearing this, replied, "The fact that you know any of that, Robert, convinces me that I was one hundred percent correct about you."

Now it was his turn to look surprised. "Yeah? About what?"

"That you are full of surprises," she replied simply, helping herself to more pasta. "I suspected as much."

He raised an eyebrow at her and leaned back, nursing the one glass of wine he had allotted himself with dinner. "I know a lot of things that might surprise you."

"Oh, I bet you do." Melora wasn't sure what to make of this man. Last night, she had gone from being certain she knew exactly who this man was to suspecting that she didn't and wanting to know more. Now, she was catching glimpses of what looked to be an excellent verbal sparring partner…and hopefully more. "I'm counting on it, actually."

 _Good answer._ This was going really well, Robert thought. So far, he apparently hadn't overstepped any boundaries, and she still seemed to be wholeheartedly on Team Romano. At this point, he just hoped he could keep the ball rolling in a positive direction. "Okay. New topic: after dinner."

"Am I supposed to complete the sentence?" she grinned, playing along. "Um, okay. How's this: After dinner, I suspect you have something planned. Eh?"

"Not bad," he conceded. "But also, not very imaginative."

"I feel safe in assuming that you are not going to suggest going to the Skeleton Key."

"And you would be safe in assuming that. Keep going."

Encouraged, she said, "I also feel safe in assuming that you do not have tickets to ride the Ferris wheel at Winter Wonderfest."

"With this wind chill factor? Again, you'd be very safe."

"Okay, well, I could do this all night. So you want to give me a hint?"

Robert gave her a look that suggested she was disappointing him. "Consider the few things that I know you like, and go from there."

Melora gave it some thought. What had she told him she liked last night? Well, from simple observation, he'd know that she was a fan of the cello. And corsets. "Please tell me we're not going to a Dickens fair or anything like that? Despite my love for weird Victorian trends, that is really not my scene."

He adopted a look of horror. "And if it was, that would be the end of our date. It's not mine, either."

She thought about it harder. "I know there's no Bach Cello Concertos happening around town tonight. So I'm stumped-" And then, she remembered the other thing she'd mentioned. "Oh, Robert. You didn't! The opera?" She stopped eating, staring at him disbelievingly.

He smiled, knowing she'd get it sooner or later. "It's not Turandot, but it's the best I could do on short notice." He produced two tickets to the Chicago Opera from his suit coat's pocket and handed them over to her.

" _The Magic Flute_!" she gasped, smiling like a child on Christmas. He noticed how the smile went straight to her eyes, full of joy. "I've never seen it before, but I've always wanted to!"

"Well, lucky for you it's actually playing in town, as opposed to some Wagnerian epic."

Melora rolled her eyes. "Ugh. No. This is much more my speed." She handed the tickets back to him, adding, "You are an excellent judge of taste, Dr. Romano."

"Well, look who I'm dining with, Ms. Weir," he replied.


	7. Chapter 7

***Heads up! We are entering the Valley of the M/arguably MA, so be warned if that is not your cup of tea. This was going to be the last chapter, but I kind of don't want it to end. Continuing Serial or Separate Stories? Let me know! Also: Big Thanks to Rocketlover for feedback and fellow fangirling.***

 **Separate**

Chapter 7

Once dinner was finished, Robert and Melora headed over to the Civic Opera House for a nine o'clock production of Mozart's _The Magic Flute_. Melora was excited to see it live, and even more thrilled when her crutch got them a free upgrade to aisle seats. "I'm going to have to remember to bring one of these to all seated events," she whispered to him as they took their seats.

Seated close together now, Robert took in her scent – a combination of gardenia and sandalwood – and it had the unexpected effect of making him want to lean over and kiss her. He resisted the urge, but he did take her hand and she gave his a little squeeze in approval as she smiled over at him. The lights dimmed then, and Robert could not think of a time when he cared less about sitting through something he'd paid so much money for.

He spent a large portion of the performance trying to think of how he could get her back to his place later. Was that rushing things? Would it put her off? Any excuse he could come up with for going to his place – coffee, meeting the dog, some random book she might like – sounded as transparent as it was. Then again, he thought, she seemed to respond best to simple statements that weren't overthought. So he purposefully (if somewhat painfully) put it out of his mind for the rest of the show.

Once it was over and they filed out towards the parking garage, both of them walked rather slowly, hand-in-hand, as if putting off the end of the date as long as possible. "That was utterly amazing," she told him as they walked. "Best first date ever, in fact."

"You say that like it's over," he replied with a suggestive raise of the eyebrow, opening the passenger side door of the car for her.

She looked at him, making no move for now to get in. "There's more?"

"I'm hoping," he said. "I realize it's getting late, but I'm having a great time, and if you'd like to come back to my place, I can offer you tea or maybe wine? If not, I can drop you off at your place, no problem."

She smiled with what he thought was an adorable blush creeping up her neck. "That sounds great, actually. It's never too late for a nice glass of red." And before he could respond, she'd kissed him, just once, before disappearing into the passenger seat.

Robert forced himself to stay focused and closed the door after her, climbing into the driver's side. "Red it is, then," he said, clearing his throat. He started the car's engine, but then turned to her, leaning over and kissing her, first lightly, then more deeply a second time. She kissed him back deliciously. "I've been waiting two hours to do that," he informed her.

"And I've been waiting a day," she replied, adding one more kiss before pulling on her seatbelt. "Where do you live, anyway?"

"Glencoe," he replied, backing carefully out of the parking spot and mentally calculating how quickly he might be able to get them there in one piece.

"Oh!" Melora was surprised that he lived outside the city proper, but then realized of course he'd live in a nice neighborhood – he was well-established surgeon, after all. But Glencoe was a longer drive outside of the city than she'd expected.

"Don't worry," he assured her, hearing the surprise in her voice. "I'll get you home safely whenever you like."

She laughed a little. "I don't know. If Glencoe's as nice as it's supposed to be, you may have to kick me out."

"It's nice enough, but a little dull. No Skeleton Keys out in the 'burbs. Just quaint bistros and antique shops."

"But…John Hughes movies!" Melora insisted with a grin, referring to the fact that the suburbs of Glencoe and Highland Park were the settings of many John Hughes films. " _Sixteen Candles_ , _Ferris Buehler's Day Off_ …"

" _Risky Business_ ," he reminded her.

"Oh yeah!" she replied, adding dramatically, "Glencoe After Dark?"

"I don't think that's a thing," he said with a smile.

Within another fifteen minutes or so, they'd arrived at Robert's house, a tidy Craftsman – one of Melora's favorite sorts of homes. Gretel barked at the front door, and Robert warned her before opening it, "Don't let her bowl you over."

Once Melora had greeted Gretel and felt sure she wouldn't get knocked off her crutch, they entered and Robert showed her into what she supposed was the living room. The home felt warm and inviting, and he helped her remove her coat, getting yet another whiff of whatever that magical scent was that seemed to be a part of her. _Think unsexy thoughts_ , he told himself, moving away to hang up their coats and retrieve the wine. "Be right back," he told her.

Melora was too busy petting Gretel to respond, but she did glance around the room. Lots of old wooden siding along the walls, darker colors, warm lighting from mica-shaded lamps – she guessed that was what made it feel so welcoming. There were a few pictures on the shelves, loads of books, and a fireplace.

When Robert returned with the wine and glasses, he found Gretel seated on the sofa next to Melora, getting all kinds of attention from his date. He cleared his throat, but Gretel wasn't about to move. "Okay, Gretel – scram." He motioned towards her dog bed by the fireplace, and Gretel relented. Melora chuckled as he poured them each a glass of wine.

"So you were saying something earlier, about this being the best first date ever?" Robert said as they each had a sip of wine.

"I did, yes. It's going to be difficult to top this one."

"Don't underestimate me."

"I'll settle for simply having you there for the whole thing instead of getting paged away."

"We've lucked out so far tonight," he said, removing his pager from his pocket and leaving it on the coffee table. "Just separating the man from the pager."

Now it was her turn to say his line. "I get that reference." Melora leaned forward then. "Hey, you remember what you were talking about last night, about separating yourself from the surgeon?" He nodded, and she continued. "It got me thinking. Have you ever heard of Einstein's spooky action at a distance?"

"I don't think I even know what that means, no."

"Well, when we were talking about separation of otherwise entangled aspects of a person, it reminded me of Quantum Entanglement. That's when two particles of a larger thing that links them are so deeply linked that even if you move them to opposite ends of the universe, one particle feels it and reacts in the same way as the other particle when it's acted upon."

Robert just looked at her. Was there some hidden message in this? "Are you hitting on me with science? Because if you are, it's working."

Melora went on, albeit with a promising smile. "Einstein thought this didn't make sense because nothing can transmit faster than the speed of light, yet… there it is. Two particles reacting in the same way, even when separated. A bit of magic with your science."

"Spooky action at a distance."

"Yup. I mean, it probably sounds better in German. But that's what happens when science meets the inexplicable. Spooky action at a distance." She'd set aside her wine, and so had he. "It backs up your hypothesis of difference as a positive influence."

Without another word, Robert leaned in and kissed her, slowly this time. He ran his hand down her back as she leaned towards him. That beautiful scent encircled him, and the kiss turned to several deeper kisses. He looked into her pale blue eyes then, and could see that whatever this was he was feeling, she was feeling it, too. It pulled them together and held them there.

Something happened inside of Melora then. She'd known she wanted this man since the evening before, and that feeling had become more intense the later it got. But now, as he paused and looked at her, it was as if some void inside of her that had been there for far too long was filled. She'd never felt this before, but if she'd had to put it into words, she would have called it a "there it is!" feeling. Something she'd not even known she'd been missing was here now, and she didn't want it to leave.

Now she kissed him, turning towards him and reaching across him to rest her hand on the back of his neck. He placed a hand on her wrist, almost as if holding it there, and she thrilled inside as he slipped the arm closest to her around her waist and down her back, holding onto her as they kissed. He began kissing her along her neck, sending chills down her spine as he whispered in her ear, "God, you're beautiful, Mel."

She smiled against his neck as she kissed it in turn, replying, "You're the most handsome man. And in case you didn't notice, I think you're sexy as hell."

"That's a relief," he grinned back at her. "Because I really want you to stay with me tonight."

"That can be arranged," she replied, kicking off her shoes as she snuggled up against him, kissing him softly.

He returned to kissing her neck, noting that she really seemed to like it. He could feel her heartbeat quicken, and her breaths became shorter as he moved, tasting the salty sweet of her skin as he moved to kiss the back of her neck. Apparently, he was doing something right, because she moved to accommodate him. _Duly noted – she was a neck person._ If he knew his anatomy – and he did – he was getting close to the point of no return for her, which suited him just fine.

He moved his hand up along her side, gently running a thumb over the tip of her breast, feeling her nipple harden through the fabric of her dress. She gasped when he tasted just the right spot at the base of her neck, and at first he thought he'd upset her because she pulled back. But he knew when she looked at him that it was the opposite. "Who taught you that?" she asked with a seductive grin, now actually swinging her legs beneath her, still mindful of her ankle but sitting on her knees so she might face him better. "You broke my code in a matter of minutes."

"I guess med school taught me that. And life. And now you know why they call me Rocket," he chuckled, slipping his arm round her waist once more and pulling her close. Soon, she sat with her legs across his lap, kissing him and working seamlessly at his shirt buttons as she did. He ran his hand up along her leg, up to where her skirt's hemline lay, bunched up around her thighs. His other hand cupped her breast, massaging it gently. He felt the softness of the skin on her legs through the silky fabric of her stockings, and he wondered if she was wearing actual stockings… as in, the kind with a garter belt. He let his hand wander upwards and was very pleased indeed when he reached their top mid-thigh, and felt the attached garter. _There truly is a God._

It didn't take long for them to realize that the living room sofa was not the best place for them to comfortably continue. "Upstairs?" he managed to say, and she simply nodded, standing with him and following him up the stairs, her hand in his. "Abbreviated tour," he said, turning on one dim bedside lamp in the bedroom. "Bedroom. Bathroom is in there." He pointed towards a door near the corner.

"And that's all I need for now," she said, cozying up to him once more. It was as if they'd known each other forever, it seemed to her. Or at least, more than a day. None of this seemed awkward or full of the usual first-time tension. It flowed naturally for her, and she wanted more. "Before you ask, I'm on the pill."

"Thank God. Who, by the way, I now believe in. So thanks for that." Standing beside the bed, she pulled off his tie and giggled as she continued to struggle with the last of his shirt buttons. "Okay, I can't for the life of me get this last button undone."

"Revenge for all the complicated bra hooks I've struggled with over the years," he replied, helping her undo the last button on his shirt and taking it off. She admired his taut, lean muscles and moved closer. He reached behind her and unzipped her dress, letting it fall to the ground at her feet. In addition to the gartered stocking, she wore black panties and a black bustier. _Here's a memory that will keep me happy for a very long time_ , he thought, drinking her in with his eyes. She was every bit as beautiful as he'd imagined, her light platinum hair spilling over her shoulders as she leaned back on the bed.

He knelt before her by the edge of the bed, telling her, "I've always wanted to do this." He ran a hand up her leg, unsnapping the front garter, and then the back of one stocking, his fingers lightly teasing her skin as they gently pulled off the stocking. He repeated the action on the other side next, this time kissing the inside of her thigh as he pulled the other stocking off.

Melora sighed contendedly, feeling his hands move up to her hips as he pulled her to the very edge of the bed, removing her panties and undoing the garter belt. Again, he kissed the inside of her thighs, touching her most sensitive area teasingly before at last kissing her there. She moaned again, inhaling sharply as he moved to taste her, her legs over his shoulders now. God, she tasted amazing. He could feel the quiver of her muscles when his tongue flicked at her in just the right place, and he returned to it again and again, feeling those quivers build. He wanted nothing more than to feel her give in to him, and her breathing and movements told him he was getting close. Feeling her move around him and hearing the effect he was having on her just made him want her more.

Melora hadn't expected this at all, but she was more than happy to feel it. Was being a doctor what informed his movements so well, she wondered before all thought left her head and she was just feeling him relentlessly moving against her in just the right way and at just the right spot, until she could barely contain herself. She felt that bunching sensation gather at the base of her spine, ready to radiate out just as he picked up his pace. He kept going, until at last she jerked, crying out, "Oh God, yes!"

Knowing that this would really prime her to feel an even more intense orgasm later, he moved his kisses up her stomach, giving her a chance to recover as he unhooked her bustier and gently moved her back further onto the bed, shoving back the covers. He'd had plenty of chances to admire her figure the night before, but none of it compared to seeing her like this, Sitting up now beside him, she pulled at his belt and undid his trousers, and soon both of them at last fully free of clothing.

He kissed her deeply once more, and she leaned up into it as he slid atop her. "Still the best first date ever?" he grinned at her suggestively, kissing her breasts and nuzzling against her neck as she lay back beneath him, finding that perfect spot once more.

She inhaled as his lips found her weak spot again, and let her hand travel down to feel him. He was rock hard, and he moaned a little as she stroked him. "What do you think?" she replied playfully.

That was all he needed. He slid easily inside of her, and it felt like heaven. It was as if every bad thing that had happened to him in life was finally being rewarded by being with this delicious woman.

Melora felt him inside of her, filling her deeply as she inhaled sharply once more with pleasure. Her senses below felt heightened now rather than dulled as she'd expected; maybe he really did know things about female anatomy that even she didn't know about, or maybe he was just that good. Either way, she felt herself opening up deep inside in a way that she didn't often feel.

He moved slowly inside of her at first, not wanting to move too quickly too soon. He wanted her to feel this, to really feel it. She tilted her hips towards him as he moved, developing a rhythm that she felt as he moved deeper and deeper within her, opening up to him more and more with every thrust. Soon, they were moving faster together, breaths coming quickly, and she knew that elusive sensation of an imminent and powerful orgasm forcing its way deeply through her, causing her muscles to clamp down around him in just the right way as he thrust into her. She cried out as she felt the waves of it wash over her. For Robert, her movements and cry of satisfaction triggered a powerful sensation, and he too came, calling out her name as he did. He stayed inside of her for a few moments as they caught their breath, Robert burying his face in her hair.

"Jesus God, Mel," he breathed, slowly withdrawing from her. "You're amazing, do you know that?"

She smiled slyly at him, settling in bed beside him and gathering some covers about her as she began to feel the chill night air settling in around them. "I do what I can to amaze and enlighten," she told him, snuggling up beside him.

"Spooky action at a closer distance?" He slipped an arm around her and pulling her close, until her head was resting on his chest.

"Art and science make terrific bedfellows," she grinned. "Did you learn all of that at med school, too?"

"A true magician never reveals his secrets," he told her, kissing the top of her head. There was something very comfortable about this now, as if he'd been waiting for Melora Weir to just appear in his life and almost didn't even recognize her when she showed up last night. But fate was funny like that, he thought. Gently caressing her back, he queried, "Did you think this would happen back when you first crashed into me last night?"

Melora laughed, rolling off his chest and onto her side, facing him. "No way!"

"Ouch," he said, feigning hurt. "You could at least pretend."

"Honestly, I was in pain and freezing and quite certain that you were some uptight businessman more worried about his Jaguar's leather upholstery than me," she confessed.

 _Oh, yeah. That._ "That's going to haunt me forever, isn't it?"

"Oh, I'll be hanging onto that one. But I did start to have…curiosity about you at the ER," Melora confessed. "It wasn't quite attraction yet."

"Curiosity?"

"Yeah. I could see you had layers. Watching you work was just really impressive. You knew exactly what you were doing and you were nothing short of amazing. And that med student, Lucy – I could tell that you actually gave a shit about her education, even if you hid it under a patina of annoyance. You're a good teacher, I bet."

He was surprised by her observations, and flattered. He'd thought she was entirely put off by him at the ER. "Huh. I thought you thought I was a rude asshole. You went kind of quiet there for a while."

She looked up at him knowingly. "The better to watch you, my dear Rocket."

"So you first realized you just had to have me when, exactly?"

Melora smiled a bit at the question. "I knew I liked you when you stuck it out at the flat. Such an adorable fish out of water!"

"I couldn't tell if you were just being polite," he told her. "It was like I'd walked onto a Tim Burton movie set. But then you asked me to stick around, and what could I say? 'No, beautiful woman. I must go.'" He wasn't sure if he should confess the next part or not. "I might not have pursued it if Anastasia hadn't thought it important enough to tell me she could tell you were interested. Like, out loud, with words."

Now it was Melora's turn to look surprised. "She did? How did she…" She didn't finish, though. "She's hated every guy I've ever dated! You're the first one she hasn't scowled about, ever."

"She's a wise woman," he commented. "Was she right about those other guys?"

Melora laughed a little, admitting, "Yes! Completely. Loser assholes, the lot of 'em."

"There you go." Robert felt an odd bit of pride in the fact that only he had been good enough in the Russian's eyes. "If Anastasia says I'm awesome, then I guess you're stuck with me."

"I guess I am," Melora replied, ducking back under his arm to snuggle up against him. She felt a warmth and a safety here in this room that she hadn't felt since she was very young, back in Milwaukee. She appreciated that he wasn't playing distant; he was referencing seeing her again and this just confirmed what she already suspected: Robert Romano didn't play the normal dating guessing games. She could feel herself growing comfortably drowsy and eventually, hearing only his breathing and the rain outside on the windowpane, she too drifted off to sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

Separate

Chapter 8

Robert awakened early out of habit; on a normal Sunday, he usually went back to sleep. On work days, he'd just get up. But this Sunday morning, he opened his eyes to find Melora curled up against him, her back against him and her feet tucked between his own. He smiled at the knowledge that this was all quite real, and not just some dream that would disappear once he was fully awake. His hand rested on her waist, and he moved closer, running his hand up to her breast, touching her gingerly as she shifted beside him, waking.

She seemed to welcome his touch, leaning back against him as he kissed her cheek, then her ear, and at last, her mouth. She turned to face him them, kissing him and wrapping her arms about him. In the faint early morning light, he could see her smiling drowsily at him between kisses as he moved his hands up and down her body, touching her and moving his fingers deftly between her legs. He hungrily tasted her neck as she moaned softly, arching her head back and letting her own hands move across his chest before moving down to stroke him. Her touch made him want more, and he moved his own fingers against her, feeling how wet she was becoming as he moved his mouth down towards her breasts. He tasted the salty sweetness of her skin, and took pleasure in knowing that he was making her want him more and more, despite the early hour.

Unable to hold back any more, Melora wordlessly shifted around until she was on top of him. Straddling him, she tilted her hips down and forward against him, enveloping him in her warmth and making him groan as she tilted forwards and then back again as she rode him, slowly at first as they developed a rhythm. He filled her completely, moving up to meet her as she moved against him, joining them both together as the beat picked up between them.

Robert's hands gripped either side of Melora's waist, keeping her in perfect time as their breathing became more frantic, building together. He could feel her starting to tighten around him, screwing her muscles down around him as the pleasure built deep inside of her, making her whimper with pleasure as she began to lose control and simply pursued the feeling.

Nothing turned Robert on more than these sounds, this feeling, these movements, and he felt right on the edge of ecstasy with her, hanging on till he heard her cry out at last, feeling her twitch around him. Then he, too, let go, feeling the waves wash over him as he came, hands holding onto her as he drove into her one last time.

Both of them spent, Melora slid off of him and onto her back. He faced her then, kissing her a few more times before they both lay back to catch their breaths.

Finally, she sighed with a smile, "Take a note: if you must wake me up early on a Sunday, always do it like that."

"Noted," he replied as she curled up against him once more, resting her head on his chest. "I couldn't help myself. But not really sorry about it."

"Nor should you be," she told him. "I'll be sure to return the favor one day." She blinked up at him. "We're not actually getting up now, are we?"

He chuckled at this, stoking her hair and kissing the top of her head. "God, no. Go back to sleep, Mel."

Some hours later, she woke up to the wonderful smell of bacon wafting upstairs from the kitchen. Melora glanced around the room, not really wanting to go through all the re-dressing that would eventually be required. She cleaned up a bit in the bathroom, wishing she had brought her purse upstairs with her because her hair could use some taming and naturally there was nothing more than a rather minimalist comb in Robert's bathroom.

She pulled his robe – quite a nice silky one with flannel lining– from its hook on the bathroom door and wrapped it tightly around herself. Her ankle throbbed a bit as she walked, reminding her to at least use the crutch if she was going to ignore the wrapping before going downstairs. As she approached the kitchen, she heard a gentle "boof" from Gretel, who was overseeing her owner's cooking in the large chef's kitchen.

"Damn!" she smiled, approaching a casually dressed Robert at the stove as he scrambled some eggs. A plate loaded with cooked bacon and yet another plate with some toasted pastries were on the already-set table, along with orange juice. "Breakfast and everything?"

He paused in his cooking long enough to give her a kiss, replying, "And everything. Coffee's ready – help yourself." As she did, he told her, "That robe looks much better on you than it does on me, by the way. You're not cold?"

"No, it's nice and warm in here. Must be the stove." Melora was used to going barefoot at home, so the lack of shoes didn't bother her. "Can I help?"

"No, thank you. Your timing is impeccable – I'm just done." He served up the eggs and brought the dish to the table, where they both served themselves a hearty meal.

"This all looks delicious, Robert. Thanks," she smiled sincerely, munching on a strip of bacon and sipping at her milk-laden coffee. "You're never getting rid of me now."

"That's the idea," he replied.

"Well, this is by far the nicest vacation I've ever gone on," she half-joked. "You must have gotten up early."

"I did. Force of habit. Did some of my paperwork. Didn't want to wake you…again. Well, I did, but you're pretty cute when you're sleeping."

"I didn't snore?" she laughed, tucking in to her eggs.

"Maybe a little. But it was a cute snore. I finally decided that maybe if I cooked up some bacon, that would help revive you."

"You don't need bacon for that," she observed, glancing out the kitchen window towards the neat back deck and sprawling yard. "I'll have to get the full tour after breakfast."

"You got it," he agreed. "Also, if you want a shower or anything, you're welcome to it."

"Will you be joining me?" she inquired with a cheeky grin.

"More than happy to." He smiled, not wanting to lose this feeling of comfort and ease. There was just no awkwardness here with Mel, and he felt that this was something he could really get used to. "Are you off for the day?"

She nodded. "Aside from practice later. And we have a Sunday show at the Skeleton Key, which is already looming ahead in the distance. I love playing, but Sunday night shows are rarely worth the trouble." She looked over at him. "You want to give me a lift home later?"

"I do, later." He wanted to ask her if she wanted to come back again later, but wondered if that might be too much. "Hey, Ms. Weir?"

"Dr. Romano?"

"I would very much like to see you again. Can we establish that as an actual thing?"

"The seeing of one another? Often?" she confirmed. "Absolutely. Come to my show tonight, if you like. Take me home with you. Make passionate love to me as much as you like." She leaned across the table and kissed him after taking another sip of coffee. "I imagine your work must keep you busy during the week. Let's seize the day, as it were."

"It does. A lot. I mean, I did want to warn you…" Was it too soon to be having this conversation, he wondered, pausing.

"You're married?" Mel cued. She was joking, but in a way that told Robert she half-expected him to say yes. "Or a serial killer?"

"No!" he said quickly, then smiled as he added, "I just…I like you and don't want you to get the wrong idea when work cuts in and takes me away."

"What idea is that?" She felt a little trepidation at that; after all, when things seem too good to be true, they usually are.

"That I'm ignoring you or don't care about you. The fact is, my job is really demanding. I get paged away a lot, I have last-minute surgeries and meetings and consultations that can come up at the last second and totally ruin plans. And even a lot of my so-called down-time is busy with research and catching up on writing reports and proposals and grants. I just…I need you to understand that I don't want that to be the case, but it is and I have to honor those responsibilities. So while this weekend we've had and are still having is amazing, you may find the quiet that we're experiencing now to be an anomaly. I can't count the number of dinners I've had to cut short or the social engagements I've had to bail on because of some emergency or another. I just figured…fair warning."

Melora nodded at that, as if considering it, as she nibbled on a cinnamon roll. "Okay. Fair enough. Consider me warned. But just so you know – I'm not used to having anything easy in life. I can tough out the hard times pretty solidly. I'm not going to take your commitment to saving lives as a personal affront; I mean, I'd have to be a pretty shitty person to get bent out of shape about that."

"Which you definitely are not," Robert volunteered, glad that it sounded like she understood.

Nodding, she added, "As long as when we're together, you're there a hundred percent, I feel like that's all anyone can ask for. I may not get paged away to operate on people, but there may be times when I have to run out of town for a show in New York or Philly or some little town in Tennessee. It doesn't happen that often, but it may be annoying that I'm not always around when you want me to be. Still, there it is."

Robert exhaled. "It's good to hear you say that. And of course, I understand. We have lives. If we can make them intersect when we can, then we can consider it a success."

"Plus, keep in mind that I live maybe a mile from your hospital. If you find yourself facing a long night at work followed by an early morning, you can always call and crash at the flat. I have pretty understanding roommates," she added with a smile.

Robert raised an eyebrow; he hadn't thought of that. "I might take you up on that."

"Please do. You've already got Ana's stamp of approval, and that's more than most."

"You know, you've got things pretty together for a woman of, what, thirty?"

"Twenty-nine. But yeah, I kind of had to skip the whole wreckless youth thing. Growing up young results in early practicality. I just hope it doesn't also result in boring predictability."

"I doubt that could ever happen with you," he assured her. But her words prompted a curiosity he'd felt before about the difficult life Anastastia had referenced. "So no wreckless youth? That seems like a waste."

She shook her head, pulling her hair back in a loosely wrapped ponytail to keep it from interfering with her brunch. "No. Things sort of went haywire in Milwaukee."

He gave her a look that prompted her to go on. "As you've said before. What happened?"

Dipping a piece of her roll into her coffee, she said, "There was an accident. A car accident. My mom and my brother Ben were killed. My dad and I were injured, but okay. I was sitting behind him, and the guy that rammed us hit the passenger side, so…" She never really knew how to tell the story; the sympathy that usually followed just made her uncomfortable. But she hazarded a glance at him now, shrugging as if to emphasize that she knew it was not pleasant breakfast conversation.

"I'm so sorry," Robert said, feeling bad for having brought it up but also glad that she trusted him with it.

"Don't be. I mean, don't be sorry for asking. There's no nice way to tell the story. But it's all a part of me and who I am, so... Anyway, my mom's side of the family never liked my dad. And they were convinced that it was his fault. Some even thought he'd been drinking, which he hadn't. They even tried to take me away from him, which just made me not want to be around them at all." She was done eating by now, but refilled her coffee before continuing.

"Anyway, so we cut ties with them. But Dad never bounced back. He was already blaming himself, and with those assholes agreeing with him, he started to really drink heavily. He lost his job and the house, so we moved out here to Hyde Park with Dad's brother's family for a while. But even they reached their limit eventually, too. So Dad and I hit the bricks and ended up in Canaryville, on the South Side. Rode the welfare train for a few years until he died, when I was 17."

Robert listened to all of this quietly, not surprised by it because Mel's personality was a lot stronger and far more independent than the average woman of her years. He didn't like to think of her going through all of that, but he also felt she built on that loss with a rare strength of spirit. He'd been there himself, although without the financial burdens, and knew that it took a fighter's spirit to grow success from great losses. "Did your family step in then?"

She smiled wryly at that thought, replying, "What family? No - the state just emancipated me early and agreed to continue welfare payments until I hit 18. Which gave me a big ol' seven months to figure my shit out. I could never rely on relatives to help me. My Mom had been the only one who was there for me no matter what, and she's been dead a long time. My Dad wanted to be there, but he was just broken."

"Did you reach out to them when your father died?"

Melora had to think about that one. "No. Honestly, at that point, I didn't want their help, even though I could have used it. If I'd asked, they probably would have taken me in for my mom's sake. But not a single one of those fuckers ever picked up the phone to say they were sorry or showed for the Army's memorial for Dad. I mean, by then, I was used to having to figure things out on my own, and by then I'd moved past expecting anyone's help, so I really just worked hard on my music. It was the only thing I had that could take me away, let me escape for a while. Like we were saying last night: first an escape, then an obsession, then simply necessary. I was lucky enough to have teachers that saw something in me worth fostering and they really pushed me to aim for a scholarship at the Music Conservatory. I mean, really pushed, as in got me the forms and helped me fill them out. Without them and without my chosen family – my real friends – I don't even know where I'd be today. I kind of hate to think of what I'd be now, if things had gone differently. I'd probably be a secretary at a brewery or something."

"You don't think you'd have stuck with the cello?" That struck a chord with Robert.

Melora shrugged, remembering that kid she used to be, safe in the arms of her family out in the 'burbs. "I don't know. When I started playing, it was just something I did because my mother wanted me to learn music, but it's not like I was driven or in love with it…until I really needed it. When things went sideways, it was all I had left of the old times. At first, I used it as an escape, and then I used it _to_ escape. This thing that started out as a lark ended up being the last bastion of beauty in my life until I made it to the Conservatory. If I never had to struggle, though… if I remained comfortable back there, I wonder if I'd have just become a normal teenager. You know, where my biggest problems would be stupid white kid things, like wearing the right brand of jeans or getting invited to the popular girls' parties. There's nothing like a sudden crash landing to jar you out of complacency and force you to grab onto what's important. Going from being a comfortable white girl in middle-class Milwaukee to living on food stamps and welfare in the South Side really redefined my priorities, you know?"

He didn't know, but he understood, so he nodded. She didn't seem to mind the question, either, so he didn't regret asking. "There's more to that story," he observed simply.

"Isn't there always?" Melora smiled, appreciating his interest. It felt like a lot of the time, nobody really wanted to know. They might ask, but then they'd go quiet and probably regret bringing it up. Or worse, they'd think she was looking for pity or a handout. "I made a lot of mistakes along the way, but I learned from those mistakes. And I chose really good people as friends and allies, luckily."

"I'm glad you had them in your corner." Robert reached across the table and took her hand. "Now you've got me there, too. I know a thing or two about fighting your way through life. I like to think I'm a good person to have at your back. Or your front. Wherever."

She stood then, still hanging onto his hand, and came over to him, sitting on his lap. She kissed him. "Wherever, indeed."


	9. Chapter 9

The next two weeks seemed to fly by. Between Robert's work and Melora's shows, they grabbed onto the time they could spend together. He came to more of her shows than he needed to, but he loved seeing her shine and enjoyed seeing the envious looks he got when he was with her. _If only those guys knew how much I went through before getting to this point_ , he'd think to himself as he basked in it.

Melora didn't know exactly what to do with herself, though. Robert was, by far, the most uncomplicated and responsible man she'd ever been with. Not to mention, in her estimation, the only one who didn't behave like a spoiled toddler half the time. At first, she'd thought maybe he just liked her for her strangeness, her difference from the norm. Perhaps he'd quickly tire of the novelty and disappear. But no – he still called her regularly, still came by the flat when he could or when he had to work early and wanted to crash at her place. And she spent two more weekends at his place, returning to the city for a show or for practice easily, now that her old VW was out of the shop and her ankle improved enough to drive herself.

Around this point, Melora had noticed that while Robert had no qualms about joining Mel in her world – her music scene, her solo gig at the Country Club, her flat and once even a close friend's party – he hadn't really invited her into much of his world. There were no invitations to meet him for lunch at or near the hospital, and she'd not met a single co-worker outside of that first night's visit to the ER. He did take her out to a banquet that he had to attend at some surgical symposium, but nobody there was anyone from his workplace. She almost thought he was embarrassed of her, but that didn't make a lot of sense. She only "dressed up" for shows, although now that she thought about it, she was a little on the alternative side. Did he not want people at work to know about her?

She tried not to let it bother her; they were getting along shockingly well. Despite the difference in their backgrounds, their personalities, interests and core values meshed perfectly. It occurred to her that perhaps she was just a little too used to things going south in her life just when they seemed to be going well. It certainly wouldn't be the first time that she'd created a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. So she decided to just keep moving forward and see what happened.

She was a little discouraged by the number of times he'd get paged away, despite having been warned about it. Some nights were peaceful, other nights were full of angry phone calls with surgical assistants or other doctors, and occasionally he would end up having to go in and operate, in extreme cases. Still, she understood, and wasn't about to try and make him feel worse than he already did about having to run off or make a phone call.

This was all new for Robert. He'd dated plenty of women, pined after plenty of women, and had his share of relationships bound for Nowhere. He'd spent the last two years pining over Elizabeth Corday before finally deciding she really meant it and giving up on her. And like a gift, Melora appeared, literally out of nowhere. He liked her easy, self-assured nature. She wasn't interested in drama or making things difficult. And because she gave him space and didn't quiz him on his whereabouts constantly, he liked to do the same for her. So he honestly didn't know how to approach the unfortunate fact that Valentine's Day was approaching only three weeks into this relationship.

It was a weeknight when he finally broached the topic; he'd worked late and come to Melora's flat to crash for the night. She was working on the last of a bit of ice cream and watching Conan O'Brien as he settled in on the sofa next to her, loosening up his collar as he did so. "Wow. Is it that late?"

"Yup," Melora replied. "Did you have dinner yet?"

He took on a thoughtful pose. "Does microwave popcorn and a granola bar count?"

"As a meal? No," she grinned.

"It's too late. I'll have something for breakfast."

"Real or imaginary?" prompted Mel.

"I'll aim for real. I've started keeping instant oatmeal packets in my desk since we've started going out," he confided. "I have to admit, there's benefits to having access to an apartment near work."

She teased, "And here I thought it was my charm and good looks that had won you over."

He laughed. "If you only knew how correct that was." He paused before adding casually, "I suppose you're expecting to be taken out Monday night?"

She set down the empty ice cream container, a confused look on her face. "Monday? What's Monday?"

Robert gave her a sideways glance that said he didn't believe her. "Really? 'What's Monday?'"

She thought hard, wondering what she was missing. It was too soon to have an anniversary. Her birthday was coming up, but he couldn't know that. "It's not your birth- ohhhh! You mean Valentine's Day?" Melora wrinkled her nose at him, as if he'd just accused her of something awful. He nodded, realizing his error, and she sighed, "Do I seem like the kind of girl who collects hearts and stuffed bears in the name of love, Robert?"

He had to laugh at that, and added with wry smile, "Not in the least, and that is just one of the reasons why I find you so appealing, Mel. No, really – humor me. Let me take you out and spoil you like the awesome boyfriend you've never had."

She grinned back at him. He was right – when had anyone in her life ever spoiled her? "Jesus, do I say it that often?"

"Miss Bad Boyfriends herself? Hey, I don't mind. They make me look like Prince Goddamn Charming. I can use all the help I can get. What do you say? A romantic evening, fancy dinner, excellent wine... Maybe I can even score the next day off in advance. You're off Tuesdays, right?"

Melora nodded, pretending she needed to consider it. "Hmmm, a long weekend?"

"I have to go in Monday early but that's for surgery and a meeting. Done by 2, latest. No surgeries slated for at least a week, just staff bullshit. I need to get caught up on paperwork."

"So a weekend, then a Monday, then fun times?"

"Exactly. You in, Ms. Weir?" He slipped an arm around her shoulders and she snuggled closer to him on the sofa.

"Ohhhh, if I have to," she smiled up at him, kissing him once lightly. "I can't deprive you of the opportunity to best your predecessors, can I?"

"That's the spirit," he replied, kissing her back. He almost let it slip out then – he wanted to say, _I love you, Mel_ , but he didn't know if it was too soon to go throwing that one around. After all, that was a bell that could not be un-rung. And maybe it would be better to save it for Valentine's Day. "So I guess I can cancel that giant teddy bear, then?"

Mel playfully smacked him with a throw pillow. "No heart-shaped boxes of candy, flowers, or teddy bears – giant or otherwise – will be accepted. I'm not one for obligatory sentiment, and I know you aren't either. It's one of the reasons I like you so much."

If he didn't already love her, that statement would have done it for sure. "You're kind of my dream girl that way, Mel."

"Any other ways?" she asked, giving him a promising look.

"Oh, so many," he replied, losing himself in her kiss.

88888***8888

Their Valentine's Day date started off beautifully. As directed, Robert brought no neither flowers, hearts, chocolates or teddy bears. He did have a pair of earrings he'd bought for her couched in a velvet box back at his house, but he planned on giving her those later. From Melora's, he whisked her away to a small but exclusive restaurant with a view of the Chicago River. "What's this place called?" she whispered across the table to him, feeling almost as if she shouldn't even be there. "There was no sign outside."

"They don't advertise. Don't have to," Robert told her, taking pride in the fact that he could get them such a nice table on a few days' notice.

Since he was driving, he kept the wine to one and a half glasses at dinner. Melora, however, claimed that she hated wasting a perfectly good bottle of wine and did her best to pick up his slack. Still, she proved that she had a strong constitution, as he couldn't really tell if she was feeling it or not. She was a little more flirty than usual, which didn't prove much besides the fact that it was time to wrap this dinner thing up.

By 9:15 dinner was done with and they were pulling on their coats when Robert's pager went off. "Damn," he remarked, taking it out to see what the trouble was.

Melora sighed heavily, adding, "At least we got all the way through dinner."

Robert's face was utterly still as he read the text. It was just enough information for him to fish his cell phone out of his overcoat and hold up a hand to Melora, silencing her abruptly. She knew it must be serious; he was never short with her. She looked at him with concern as they stood there in the restaurant's narrow entryway, Robert dialing a familiar number and thrusting the valet ticket at her, saying, "Tell them to step on it. It's an emergency."

Melora nodded, not asking questions as he clearly didn't have time to waste on explanations. She stepped out and conveyed the message to the valet, chipping in her own $20 as a tip so he would be extra quick about it.

Within a minute, Robert was joining her outside, calling out, "That car had better be on its way!" towards the valet station.

Melora hadn't seen him look like this before – it was a mixture of fear, consternation and utter urgency. He would not stand still, and paced until the valet returned with his car about thirty seconds later. "Should I get a cab home?" she asked timidly as he hopped into the driver's seat.

"Get in," was his response.

She remembered the Robert she'd seen that first night in the ER, and recognized him again, now. "What is it?" she ventured.

"Lucy and Carter were attacked by some fucking lunatic. With a knife. In the ER." He was speaking in that truncated language of the ER. "They're being stabilized for surgery. All hands on deck." He was maneuvering the sports car quickly back towards the hospital. "There's no time for me to take you home. But it's close – you can get a cab and I'll come to your place when I'm done." His voice had softened then, and the Robert she knew was back for the time being.

Melora nodded; she knew he liked Lucy best of the ER staff, and this was going to be a tough night. She'd only met Lucy and Carter the one time, but it was so surreal to think that they now were in grave danger. "Call before you come over so I can let you in?"

"Sure," he replied without hesitation, pulling up briefly in front of the hospital; it would be easier to catch a cab there. "Need money for a cab?"

She shook her head, no, and got out. "Good luck." Just for a second, she caught a look on his face that she'd never seen before. Was it dread? But then he was looking back at the road and driving away.

Melora caught a taxi fairly easily, although she found herself wishing she hadn't tipped the valet an entire $20 because it really would have come in handy to pay the cabbie. As it was, she had just enough to pay the man.

She never knew how long Robert's surgeries were going to last. Sometimes they were practically over before they started, while others went on for hours and hours. Considering the circumstances, she doubted he'd be here before midnight, so she simply changed into her pajamas and collapsed onto the sofa, falling asleep with the TV on.

Around 11, she woke up to the sound of the news on the TV. "Breaking News: A brutal attack at Cook County General Hospital leaves two medical professionals fighting for their lives." Melora forced herself to wake up and pay attention, not sure what time it was. She paid attention long enough to garner some basic facts – that a patient who'd come into the ER with a migraine ended up exhibiting signs of having neurological issues, but it was later determined he'd actually suffered a psychotic break and stabbed Lucy Knight and John Carter. According to the news reports, both were still in surgery, but the suspect was in custody. Melora caught sight of some of the ER staff fending off reporters before police stepped in and ushered the cameras outside.

If the wine and stress had made her drowsy, now she was wide awake. She realized that Serena and Ana were still out at their party, and for the first time ever, she was worried for them. It was as if it had never occurred to her before that horrible things could happen to anyone at any time. She, of all people, should definitely know that! She'd lost two of her immediate family in a car wreck, after all. People could snap and try to kill you for no real reason. The universe, it seemed, was chaos.

Knowing that sleep was out of the question now, she made a cup of tea and turned on an old movie, but it was hopeless. She couldn't relax or distract herself. She kept staring at the phone, willing it to ring.

Around midnight, Serena and Ana came home, surprised to find Melora there and alone. She filled them in, relieved to see they were home safe and to have others to talk to about it. Ana stayed up with Melora, a look of concern on her face. She pulled a big afghan blanket off the back of the sofa and draped it over them both, patting her friend on the arm and calling her a pet name, "Myshka."

The phone finally rang at 1 a.m. and Melora realized she must have dozed off, because Ana had gone to bed and the TV was turned down low. She snatched up the phone. "Hello?"

"Hi, Mel." It was Robert. "We're wrapping things up here for now. Seems like Lucy's stable, but I'm gonna stick around and make sure it's under control."

Melora sighed with relief. "Oh, thank God. What about Carter?"

"He's out of surgery and in ICU for now. If everything goes okay, I should be there in an hour or so. Okay?"

"Sure. Just call me from your cell when you get here. Don't ring the bell. Okay?"

"Okay. See you soon." Melora felt relief wash over her, and happily dozed off again.

She woke up at nearly four-thirty a.m. – no Robert. No phone call. Shit. Something bad happened, she just knew it. She called his home number on the off chance that he went straight there, but got the machine. She called his office number, but got shuttled immediately into voicemail. Shitshitshit, she thought, pulling on her slippers and debating whether she should get dressed and just drive the Bug to the hospital and see for herself what was going on.

Then she heard it – a faint knocking at the door.

Well, it was super late. He probably didn't want to wake the whole flat up. Melora went down the long staircase and saw through the peephole that it was Robert. She opened the door and knew immediately that something had gone horribly wrong. "Come in," she said, pulling him inside and locking the door behind him, as if to lock the bad news outside behind him.

They just stood there, inside the front door at the bottom of the stairs. Mel knew. He looked defeated, lost. "Oh, Robert." Her heart went out to him, and she wrapped him in her embrace. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

He inhaled deeply then, as if catching his breath or maybe just trying to replace the smell of the OR with that of this place and this woman that only he was privy to. It was almost like he was grounding himself. "We lost her," he said quietly. "We lost her."


	10. Chapter 10

[Side note: And end to this story, but not the pair, I hope! I'd love to bring them back again someday, if you'll have them. Thank you all for the reviews and feedback – if there was no audience, this would be a rather sad and lonely practice. And a HUGE thank you to Rocketlover for the inspiration, feedback, and lovely chats, which I plan on continuing!]

Separate: Chapter 10

Melora ushered Robert upstairs and into the living room, where they sat together on the sofa. "What happened?" she asked, adding, "I mean, unless you don't want to talk." She knew that for her sometimes, it was too hard to talk about things.

But Robert seemed to want to try and piece it all together. "Dr. Corday and I thought that we had Lucy stabilized. She wasn't out of the woods entirely. I mean, the guy really did a number on her. Cut her throat – we put in a trache to at least give her an airway while we repaired the damage to her lung. Her spleen was destroyed – we removed it. And the bastard got her in the liver as well, but again, we repaired it."

Melora winced; that didn't sound good but she remembered that it was something people could live without, albeit carefully. "Oh God – knife wounds?" _How terrifying_ , she thought to herself.

"Knife wounds," he nodded, briefly making eye contact with her as he slipped out of surgery report mode. "It didn't help that they were lying around bleeding for some time before they were discovered because apparently, there was a party being thrown in the goddamn ER. So there had already been a lot of blood loss. They had to crack her chest open in the ER to deal with tamponade from yet another knife wound. How this guy managed to do so much critical damage …." He didn't want to let himself think too hard about how a maniac was left alone with a knife while the ER threw a party; it infuriated him too much to consider. At least he and Kerry were in agreement on that point. He also didn't want to explain a bunch of technical details, so he just plowed on with the facts. It was a relief to spew it all out to someone who hadn't been there, and even more so to someone who wasn't a doctor who might second-guess every decision they made…as if he wasn't already doing that.

"All surgical patients get a blood thinner to keep the risk down of throwing blood clots, which can cause a stroke or embolism and are just bad news all around. I mean, blood vessels naturally coagulate when injury occurs – it's an automatic response to aid in healing. So before she even got to us, they'd administered heparin, an anticoagulant. She'd already lost a lot of blood, but I'll take that over throwing a clot. So she was stable…sort of. That was when I called you. But then she developed a pulmonary embolism, which meant a clot was thrown anyway and could result in shutting down the flow of blood to the heart. Lizzie and I both agreed that giving Lucy more heparin at this point was far too risky, because if she did bleed out anymore and her blood wasn't able to coagulate, she could easily die. So what we needed to do was put in a filter we use to reverse the heparin and prevent further clotting. But…" He paused then. "We were so close to getting that filter in, but she threw a second clot, and then a third, and before we knew it we were up to our wrists trying to suction them all out… and we couldn't…"

He just shook his head, remembering each second from when she went into asystole. "We couldn't get them in time and we couldn't get the heart pumping again. We tried internal compressions, shocking…nothing, none of it worked. And I couldn't separate from it this time. This was a student, Mel. And she was bright as hell, too. I, uh, stayed to close up her wounds before the morgue came for her. I waited around. I didn't want to just leave her there alone." How many times had he said that once a person was dead, their body became an empty vessel? And why was it so hard to see it that way now? Just because he knew her? "I didn't want to just leave her there."

Melora took his hand, her own tears forming again. "Of course you didn't," she told him, wiping at her eyes. "You knew her and cared about her. The other surgeon – Dr. Corday? I'm sure she felt it, too."

Robert nodded, remembering how Lizzie's shoulders slumped at the sound of the flatline, how she'd started sobbing behind her mask. "She did. Her mother was in town visiting and I can't even imagine what that visit must be like for her this morning." Lizzie was the only surgeon he'd admired, respected, _and_ loved. He just hoped Greene would be there for her. Robert didn't know what he'd do without Melora here now. Probably put himself to sleep with booze. Thinking of that now, he asked, "Got any whiskey?"

Melora, immediately latching onto the idea of being able to do something helpful, nodded. "Maker's Mark left over from a Halloween party we threw. Good enough?"

He nodded; at least it wasn't Jack Daniels – that stuff was the worst. "Perfect, thanks."

"Ice?"

"Just the glass and the bottle."

She scampered off to the kitchen and quickly returned with a glass and a half-empty bottle of Maker's Mark whiskey. As he helped himself, he asked, "You get any sleep tonight?"

"I dozed off and on. The wine from dinner made me zonk out early, but then I was awake had trouble getting back to sleep. Umm, thanks for dinner, by the way. It was lovely."

"Happy Valentines," he said dourly, downing the whiskey he'd poured before pouring a second, more generous glass. "Thanks for understanding. I'm sorry – well, I'm sorry it happened at all."

"I know," she assured him. "Has anyone spoken to her family?"

"The police are handling all of that, since it's a homicide and they usually need to do that in person."

"Is Carter okay?" In all of this, Melora had almost forgotten there was another victim.

"Yeah," Robert replied. "He's in ICU still, but he regained consciousness. Things were dicey for him as well, but aside from a spinal injury, he's going to be okay." Robert had some mixed emotions about Carter; obviously, he was relieved that Carter would live but he also wondered how Carter hadn't caught that Lucy's patient was so unstable. He stopped himself from judging yet, since he didn't know much about how any of this happened.

"Are you able to take tomorrow off?"

He nodded. "I'm off for the rest of the week. Anspaugh offered to cover. And then the week after that, they're sending me to a conference in New York. You're welcome to come along if you can get the time off."

Melora nodded. "I'll see what I can arrange." She sensed that he didn't want to think about being alone right now.

He was quiet then, and gave one more look around the room. He really didn't want to stay here tonight. He didn't want to face roommates in the morning, and Mel tended to sleep hours later than he did. "Do me a favor?"

"Of course."

"Pack a bag, grab your cello, and come back to my house for a few days? Maybe the rest of the week?" He saw her eyeing his whiskey and added, "You can drive the Jag."

"Wow." She raised her eyebrows at this; when she asked if she could drive it once before, he'd told her, _Are you kidding? I barely let myself drive it!_ "How can I say no? I mean, I'll have to come into the city a couple of times for work and rehearsal, and one show on Saturday night, but yeah. Give me a few minutes to get my stuff together." She paused, asking, "You really want me to bring the sarcophagus?" She raised an eyebrow at him.

"Yeah. I have some work to do, and I don't want you to get bored. Plus, don't tell anyone, but I do like hearing you play."

"I won't tell a soul," she grinned, embracing him and giving him a quick kiss before packing a bag, giving him leave to have one more glass of whiskey while she did.

As she drove them, Robert felt strange in the passenger seat. It was a perspective he was unused to. So far, Melora was doing a decent job driving; she only ground the gears a bit once so far. Then again, she was used to the forgiving nature of her old VW.

He was beginning to feel the effects of the whiskey, and a grateful sort of exhaustion settled over him. "Did I tell you that last Christmas, Lucy came pounding on my door at like, midnight?"

"What? No!" Melora was having trouble picturing anyone doing that, especially to Robert. "Why?"

"She had a patient who needed a surgery that I was the only one certified to perform. I'd hung up on her when she called me, so she took the next not-very-logical step."

"Did you sic Gretel on her?" Melora knew the most Gretel would do would be to lick the girl within an inch of her life, and smiled a bit wider at the idea.

"No, but I did tell her I called the police on her," he said, gazing out the window as he recalled the story, eyes feeling heavy-lidded. "I didn't really. I was just pissed off that she dared to come to my home. In case you hadn't noticed, I do what I can to keep my personal life from intersecting with my work life."

"I actually had noticed that," confessed Melora. "I'm just glad to hear it's a standing tradition, and not that you're hiding me."

"I am hiding you, but believe me, it's to keep you safe from their gossip-hungry, fevered brains. The less those people know about me, the safer my personal life is."

Made sense, she supposed. "So, did you do the surgery?"

"Yeah, I gave in. Went in and did the surgery. I let her assist, too."

Melora glanced over at him – he seemed so tired and more than a little defeated. She didn't know what to say; she knew that sometimes, words couldn't do emotion justice.

"It's just such a waste. She'd have been a great doctor. Had the makings of a great surgeon, even. Logical, good instincts, knew the material even better than some of the doctors. Tenacious, too. She reminded me a lot of my kid sister, Alice."

This was new information. Melora perked up. "I haven't heard you mention her."

"No?" He definitely was sounding tired. And maybe a little drunk. "She's dead."

Melora hadn't expected that. She felt instantly terrible; she'd told him her whole sob story about losing her mother and brother and he'd kept this to himself. "Robert, I'm sorry-"

He waved away the sentiment. "It was a long time ago. She drowned when she was fifteen. I was seventeen. We were at our family's place in the Hamptons, on the beach. She was an excellent swimmer, but that day there were riptides and…well, by the time we realized she'd been gone too long, it was too late. None of us knew CPR then, anyway."

She found herself wondering if that was what compelled him to become a doctor, but said nothing.

"I think we talked a little bit about my family that first night, with you freezing your ass off in this very seat," Robert continued.

"I remember it well," Melora commented, getting a wry smile from him. "You didn't tell me much, aside from the fact that they existed. And that they were into meat, so to speak."

Robert chuckled at how she phrased it. "I'll elaborate. My mom's still alive, and she's great. My dad, on the other hand…he was an asshole. A drunk and a cheat and a bully. But successful and admittedly good at his job. And my kid sister Alice was the only person he was ever nice to. She'd stick up for me when he'd get mad at me for, I don't know, breathing. He'd find any excuse to pick on me. I guess he didn't think I was the sort of son he deserved, which I can only assume would be, like him, a thick-necked loudmouth. He was one of the reasons I took up karate, by the way."

Melora stayed quiet and let him talk, keeping her eyes on the road as he gazed out the window at the world they drove past, the hint of dawn approaching.

"Alice was really the light in what could have been a dark place. If it weren't for her and my mom – but mostly her – I might very well have ended up exactly like him. She could make us smile and laugh right in the middle of a heated argument – she just knew what to say and when and how to say it. A complete goof but a strong and wise ally." He smiled a little at the memory, but the smile faded and he continued speaking. "When Dad got drunk after that – which was often – he'd usually wind up the evening by telling me it should have been me. And I guess maybe…I guess maybe I thought he was right for a while. But eventually, I realized that just because a guy's your father, that doesn't mean you have to like him. And you definitely don't have to love him. That sort of respect is earned, and I was never more relieved than I was when I realized that his words were his problem, not mine. Once I let go of that, everything sort of fell into place."

Melora pulled the car into his garage then, and he helped carry her things into the house, where Gretel happily danced around them, as if telling them she'd been worried. Robert set Melora's things down in the hall for now, motioning for her to come into his study, which she hadn't spent much time in yet.

Robert pointed to a photograph on his bookshelf; it was an old family photo from when Robert was a teenager. "That's Alice," he said, pointing to the young teen standing beside him.

Alice had long blond hair like her mother, a round face, and the brightest, dimpled smile of any of them. And Melora understood it all then. She smiled at the picture, simply because it felt like not smiling back at her would be an insult to the glory of that smile. "Wow. She even looks like Lucy."

"Yeah. And I know – I mean, obviously, I know Lucy Knight was Lucy Knight and not Alice. But that was what caught my attention first about Lucy. Lucy wasn't as outgoing as Alice was, but she had that same smile the few times I saw it." He looked over Melora's shoulder at the picture and he, too, had to smile a little.

"So when Lucy came pounding on my door last Christmas with her sob story about her patient, I told her I couldn't care less and to get off my property. But goddammit, that kid stood her ground. She told me – to my face – that she'd assumed that I had become a surgeon in order to help people, to save lives. And for a second, it was like my sister was yelling at me, trying to make me remember why I got into this business to begin with. So I caved. I mean, I pretended like I only did it because I respected her moxie in making such a bold move, which was partly true. But also, I did it because I didn't want to…to disappoint my sister. And I didn't want my dad to be right. I became a surgeon to show him that, while I would have gladly taken Alice's place on the ocean floor that day, if I was going to live, I was going to make it count. My life was going to matter."

Melora set the photo back on the shelf and looked at him then. She could feel her own eyes fill with tears, thinking of her own lost family and all the things she never got to tell them. "You know your sister would be so proud of you right now, Robert." Melora smiled a little through her tears. "Lucy, too. She knew she had the best surgeon working on her. And if she had to go, at least she was surrounded by people who cared about her. I really believe she had to know that." She held him close then, as the darkness outside still held firm despite the hour – nearly six a.m.

He embraced her, kissing the top of her head, knowing that he had picked exactly the right person to share all of this with. She understood. Since he'd shown up at her door, she had known exactly what to say and do, and what not to say and do. And she understood what it was to be left behind, not just once, but twice. "I hope so. She was a good kid. They both were. They deserved to live and do all the things that they would have done. And if I'm left behind, I'm making it count."

"You already are," Melora assured him.

They left the study then, heading upstairs with her overnight bag. It was beyond late, and he felt he could easily sleep through the next day. But then he remembered something. "Hey, I wanted to tell you something tonight, before…you know, all of _that_ happened."

"Yeah?" They were at the top of the stairs now, and she faced him. "What's that?"

"I love you, Ms. Weir. No obligatory sentiment about it."

She kissed him, without hesitation. She hadn't expected to hear it, but she knew it was real, this thing between them. "I love you too, Dr. Romano." She said it easily, without even having to think about it. It felt overdue and natural.

"Good," he said, and they continued on to bed, where the respite of sleep awaited them. They were both asleep before the sun finally brought the dawn, wrapped in the comfort of one another, feeling that if nothing else, at least a sort of peace was possible together.


End file.
